Idea: 81Sunday, 22 March 2015By. Francis Pedraza

Rainbows

— Meaningful, Impermanent Conversations

Relationships are impermanent. They exist while they exist. In other words, while two people have conversations, they are in a relationship. When they stop having conversations, their relationship fades. It can be revived, but only by resuming conversation. This is not only natural, it is as it should be. One fades, another begins.

A meaningful conversation is like a rainbow. A rainbow is beautiful. But would we notice its beauty if it wasn’t so rare and impermanent? It does not last forever, so we have to enjoy it while we can.

Rainbows is an application for having meaningful conversations with no more than seven other people at a time. Why seven? Because Sir Isaac Newton originally divided the rainbow spectrum into seven main colors. And because meaningful conversations are rare, impermanent… and beautiful. They last only as long as two people have enough time, attention and curiosity to continue talking. When they fade, it’s best to let them move on, creating space for new conversations.

— Choose a person you want to get to know better. Send them an invitation to join your rainbow.
— Once they arrive, a question will appear. To see their answer, you have to respond; and vice-versa. This prompt gets the conversation started.
— A conversation may continue as long as both people desire. Once it fades — that is, once activity has ceased for over 24 hours — then a notification is sent to the participants inviting them to keep the conversation going, either with a question of their own, or with a randomly generated one. Each new question ends the previous question’s “stage”, and the conversation history for that stage is emailed to the participants, (and eventually deleted from the server).
— The participants can keep the conversation going for as many days as they like, but once activity stops, they will have only seven days to resume. On the seventh and last day, they will receive a notification, and if the conversation hasn’t resumed within the final 24 hours, then the rainbow will fade. If at any point in the future the two people want to get back in touch, they can resume their relationship by starting a new rainbow.
— We like color. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Each conversation will be assigned to a color. The more recently active conversation will be red (hot), and the longest inactive conversation will be violet (cold). Each new color costs $1/year to unlock. You get your first conversation free.
— No more than seven (7) rainbows can be going at a time, so if you want to start a conversation with an eighth person, it will have to replace your least active rainbow.