the email gun

I just finished the Emily St. John Mandel's post-apocalyptic novel  "Station Eleven". One recurring trope is how non-dark screens for computers or phones are just a memory-- I enjoyed this passage:

"Why did we always say we were going to shoot emails?"
"I don't know. I've wondered that too."
"Why couldn't we just say we were going to send them? We were just pressing a button, were we not?"
"Not even a real button. A picture of a button on a screen."
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about."
"There was not, in fact, an email gun. Although that would've been nice. I would've preferred that."

...I recorded a few more quotes from the book in my commonplace blog.

Email guns are the best gun idea I've heard since the videogame Saints Row IV's Dubstep Gun: