Matt Webb posted “Inbox Hero” about a month back (via AJ):

Rand: The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about an email app built on a principle of Objectivism. At the moment, my email client defaults to doing nothing, and I must intervene to create action (ie, write a reply).

But if I had an Objectivist email app, it would automatically respond to all emails with stock enabling and forceful replies after a period of (say) 15 minutes, and I would have to intervene if I wanted it to not do that.

I shared it in Google Reader and Tom Wolf (who I’ve quoted before) replied:

This is a neat way to think about building applications. Rather than starting from “let’s solve a problem”, start from “given this solution, how should it behave assuming I hold X as my primary belief framework?” I’m not sure it’s a practical way to build apps for the masses, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless :)

And just in minor regards to Objectivism, I inadvertently dabbled in it when I was about 14 but fortunately quickly outgrew it.