Even if some of the research awarded was quite alright, an invention of outstanding importance was left unacknowledged. Surely there must have been some sort of a mistake.
 
I mean, sure, discovering and developing a green fluorescent protein is nothing to sneeze at. And yeah, discovering the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature was ok, I guess. But still, an amazing invention slipped through the committee’s fingers. An invention of great magnitude: the Alco-lock for email!

This marvel of social ingenuity, stopping you from sending emails when you’re drunk, is an invention of Google’s Jon Perlow. It’s called Mail Goggles, and is automatically activated on Friday and Saturday nights. Many of us instinctively grasp the importance of this breakthrough, but in order to spell out its significance, let’s break things down a bit.

Some areas of life are regulated more clearly than others. It’s pretty easy to follow the major no-no’s around stealing, torturing animals, or killing your parents. But in the more subtle areas of social life the rules of the road are less clear. When you’re drunk as a skunk, you know there’s an active law-enforcement—or even Alco-locks for cars—likely to prevent you from driving. But what’s stopping you from sending those embarrassing drunken e-mails to your boss, your editor, or your ex-boy/girlfriend?

The members of the Nobel Committee are probably no exception to the potentially dire allure of this black hole of social regulation. So what were they thinking? The superior significance of the Alco-lock for email should be apparent to everyone.