Digital technology hasn’t exactly made everything better, but one thing that doesn’t stink is being able to quickly communicate with people around the globe. I can email, text, call, or even FaceTime friends no matter how far apart we might be. But what if you could keep that ability while also making it painfully slow? Carrier pigeon slow, in fact? Then you’d have the new IOS app Carrier Pidge. It delivers your messages at the exact same speed as one of those birds would have.
Developer Noah Larrobino clearly doesn’t believe in instant gratification. His Carrier Pidge app (which we first learned about at Tom’s Hardware) allows you to convey messages with all the urgency of a carrier pigeon. That’s not really an indictment of those old-time messengers, though. The free app sends yours at the speed those birds could fly, which was an impressive 110+ mph. The app uses GPS distance to figure out how quickly/slowly your message arrives at its destination.
That’s if it makes it at all. In an effort to stay authentic to the carrier pigeon mode of communication, there is a 0.2% chance your note won’t reach its destination. There’s also a 25% +/- speed variance, so it could get there faster or slower. Either way, it makes a cross country message in the U.S. an almost full-day ordeal.
While this seems silly, there are some very practical reasons to use it. Sometimes you don’t want someone to instantly get your message. For example you might send a birthday greeting before you go to bed or if you will be unavailable the next day. With Carrier Pidge you can be 99.8% confident your well wishes will arrive on time. And if you forget to send it entirely you can always blame the digital pigeon for getting distracted and dying.
Will digital carrier pigeon replace all of the instant forms of communication we currently employ? Probably not, but we won’t actually rule it out. Modern digital tech isn’t exactly an unqualified success. Maybe we’d be better off using birds.