Dharmishta: Casual dating in an age of ubiquitous computing
cayla
· 8 months ago
re: 'Do they really have a monopoly on memories and also that one letter in gmail? '
sometimes, i just don't have the heart (or will power?) to erase *them* from my address book. i guess the only solution i've found to ex-unexpectedly-showing-up-in-gmail-address-listings is a code name system. it includes addressees like "zzDoNotReply (first name) OrSallyWillHateYou (last name)" and "zzGrrr." it's imperfect, but at least the distinction pops up quickly to remind me where i stand with the addressee. i leave it up to you to develop an email address response system that is connected with my emotional/relationship status. and please hurry!
Dharmishta Rood
· 8 months ago
My solution has been a. time and b. being very careful. I mean, there's only so many letters in the alphabet, so it is likely I will begin to email someone else with that first letter, but it sure makes things interesting!
Brennan Moore
· 8 months ago
interesting that our giant networked pocket calculators, based on binaries, are the things helping break down and rethink these social binaries.
no
· 8 months ago
"I carried my laptop with me my first year in college, far before it was cool to do so"
ahahaha. no. first, lots of people did this, myself included. you really think people weren't carrying laptops in 2003? second, even if you were correct, we must have different definitions of "far" as it relates to time. your definition apparently means "on the order of six months to a year, max."
"There is an archive of my life in digital format, that alone is uninteresting"
what? i don't know how you can just dismiss this so easily. previous generations' memories are almost wholly documented by dusty polaroids and crappy VHS camcorder movies made by their dads. i, however, can open up my logfiles and look back on the exact conversations, word for word, i had with someone almost 10 years ago. i have websites, message boards, etc, with little pieces of me as i once was, suspended in the internet forever. this trend will only grow, with more and more of our lives becoming documented, digitized, probably made public, and preserved forever for all to see. how is this uninteresting??
"Do they really have a monopoly on memories and also that one letter in gmail?"
if they're the only person you've ever emailed with that letter in their name...then yes, they have a monopoly on it as far as gmail is concerned. otherwise, a lot of names will show up, and you probably wouldn't even notice it unless you type really slowly. if even seeing your ex's name briefly as you type is too much of an emotional rollercoaster for you (this is probably unhealthy btw) then you could always remove them from your contact list.
then you conclude with standard internet + working/dating observations that have already been made by everyone. these are your more interesting questions? sorry, i don't agree.
Dharmishta Rood
· 8 months ago
Thanks for the responses, I have a few thoughts. This blog is, in its current state, written much like a conversation. I wrote it not a a complete analysis of this turf, but to do exactly what we're doing right now, engaging in conversation about these issues. Your critiques reside on conversational absolutes:
In my own experience as an undergraduate at UCSC, not very many people carried laptops; perhaps it was different at other universities.
In an edit of this blog I had changed it to something like "less interesting" but it got lost and skipped in the tumblr preview-edit-publish steps I took before I hit publish. I do find these questions around personal digital archives interesting, but not as interesting as the human interactions that can be centered around them.
The gmail letter monopoly debate is an interesting one. In my gmail, the person with any particular first initial appears first when i type that letter. for frequently emailed persons, I just hit their letter and hit enter (of course with overlap). Persons from past relationships are often people I keep in contact with, but not as frequently as the first-initial-hit-enter type of communication.
The dichotomies at the end are obv. not new points, but interesting entry points for a discussion. I'm writing this blog as a document of ideas that arise in my life amidst all of the different media work I'm doing, and I really appreciate the conversation. Keep reading, I'd love to discuss!
no
· 8 months ago
"I do find these questions around personal digital archives interesting, but not as interesting as the human interactions that can be centered around them."
i guess that's fair, but i'm not sure i really understand the distinction. if they're archives of personal interactions (e.g. chatlogs, message boards, etc) then aren't the human interactions already there? if you're the only one involved, the players in the interaction then become you as you are now and you as you were long ago. i still think that's an interesting interaction. maybe you disagree?
i'm not sure how gmail's ordering works - for me, when i type 'a', the first match is someone whose last name begins with 'a', which takes precedence over another contact whose first name is 'aaron', and i speak with aaron a lot more than i do with the other 'a' match. however when i type 'c', a first name match has precedence over a last name match.
in my opinion they should be sorted by some heuristic that takes into account frequency of contact and prominence of letter (e.g. 'd' and 'r' would cause your name to appear higher than 'm', even though your name contains an 'm').
Dharmishta Rood
· 8 months ago
You can slice the pie any number of ways. The information can be seen as a relic of interpersonal interaction (which, as you know is what makes it interesting to me personally), or looked at it as a particular snapshot of an era in terms of mannerisms, language (if it's images then) fashion and other visual or cultural information from a particular time and place. It can be seen as pieces of data, made meaningful as aggregate parts of a whole (think tag clouds or number-of-word-uses in a NYT Many Eyes visualization) or, as cultural or social indicators of membership of a smaller sub-group (think facebook groups, fan pages or twitter meet-ups, or I guess "tweet-ups").
The gmail thing is a bit complex which is why I didn't really get into it, but what I was trying to get across was the fact that even long after I'd more or less moved on from the memories, my gmail's "memory" retained my preference for contacting this person long beyond when I was regularly contacting him. I've since moved on and so has my gmail, but I was trying to get across (in, perhaps to my detriment, the simplest way possible) the fact that my gmail has a memory, and I have memories and sometimes what I'm working on moving away from is still digitally "remembered" as something that once was a larger part of my life. It's no great shakes on its own as a concept, but I posted this with great curiosity to see how others deal with similar problems, relating back to the first point that it's human interaction that makes digital data fascinating to me.
I'd love to have your thoughts on this blog from time to time, so feel free to stick around and challenge me on anything. :)
Justin Vincent
· 8 months ago
The new rules of interaction can be overwhelming (after all, our brains did not evolve to interact in this new social landscape) or occasionally dangerous (e.g. the craigslist killer). However, you could see technological advances in data collection and analysis as well as the new social commons as a means by which you can more easily efficiently and effectively build important life relationships. For example, everyone is seeking his/her ‘true love’, but what is the probability that I will find a ‘true love’? Let’s explore this in terms of probability.
Number of people on Earth (in 1998): 5,592,830,000
For me, I am only interested in women, of which there are approximately: 2,941,118,000
I am unlikely to marry a woman that was raised in a radically different situation from me. So, I will tailor my search to ladies from ‘first world’ countries. We are much more likely to share similar values, hobbies, and customs. Now we are at approximately: 605,601,000
Because I am neither a pedophile nor a gerophile, I would like to restrict my search for love to those whose age is approximately equal to my own, so somewhere between 21 and 27. These stats are a bit tricky to estimate because census data is divided into quantiles, but that leaves me with approximately: 65,399,083
It is really important for me to have a woman that is highly intelligent and passionate about something. So, for a girl to be considered really brilliant to me, she should fall at least two standard deviations above the norm. That gives us about: 1,487838
I would like to have a woman that was beautiful (inside & out). Beauty is probably normally distributed amongst the population. I would be pleased if she fell at least one standard deviation above the norm, which gives me about: 236,053
I would imagine about 50% of these brilliant, pretty girls are committed, so the number drops to: 118,027
Finally, just because I think the girl is the bee’s knees, doesn’t mean she is going to like me. I think I am a handsome, intelligent, and fun guy. But, alas, not every girl falls for my charms. Let’s say that a girl will date me if she thinks I am a standard deviation above ‘average’, so that gives us about: 18,726 potential ‘true loves’
So, if I went on blind dates with all eligible women (irregardless of beauty or intelligence), I would have to go on about 3,493 dates to find one of my 18,726 potential mates out of the 65,399,083 potential ladies out there.
“Casual dating in an age of ubiquitous computing” could help me find my true love sooner. It may occasionally cause my stone-age brain distress, anxiety or confusion, but as a scientist, I think it has the potential to make me a lot more happy in the long run. What do you think?
Dharmishta Rood
· 8 months ago
Hey Justin!
This is a really fascinating response--I feel like it could be it's own whole post somewhere. I see that with online technologies (and now statistics to prove it!) one can curate the experience of finding persons of interest. But what then? Your stats only address up to meeting point, run it by me again, but with stats for awkwardness on gchat and email/uncertainty whether an interaction was truly work/school related or instigated by anterior motives (to either my delight or dismay, depending)/how casual drinks or coffee with someone fits in to my pretty much constant connection to the internet...
tibbon
· 8 months ago
These are some really interesting questions, which I've been trying to tackle myself. I'm attempting to organize a panel at the next large Podcamp I attend- hoping to get some group consensus on the questions in a public forum.
Interestingly enough, meeting someone, facebooking them, following them on twitter, and commenting on their blog is probably the perfect example of confusing behavior that puzzles both of us. ;)
All Comments
sometimes, i just don't have the heart (or will power?) to erase *them* from my address book. i guess the only solution i've found to ex-unexpectedly-showing-up-in-gmail-address-listings is a code name system. it includes addressees like "zzDoNotReply (first name) OrSallyWillHateYou (last name)" and "zzGrrr." it's imperfect, but at least the distinction pops up quickly to remind me where i stand with the addressee. i leave it up to you to develop an email address response system that is connected with my emotional/relationship status. and please hurry!
ahahaha. no. first, lots of people did this, myself included. you really think people weren't carrying laptops in 2003? second, even if you were correct, we must have different definitions of "far" as it relates to time. your definition apparently means "on the order of six months to a year, max."
"There is an archive of my life in digital format, that alone is uninteresting"
what? i don't know how you can just dismiss this so easily. previous generations' memories are almost wholly documented by dusty polaroids and crappy VHS camcorder movies made by their dads. i, however, can open up my logfiles and look back on the exact conversations, word for word, i had with someone almost 10 years ago. i have websites, message boards, etc, with little pieces of me as i once was, suspended in the internet forever. this trend will only grow, with more and more of our lives becoming documented, digitized, probably made public, and preserved forever for all to see. how is this uninteresting??
"Do they really have a monopoly on memories and also that one letter in gmail?"
if they're the only person you've ever emailed with that letter in their name...then yes, they have a monopoly on it as far as gmail is concerned. otherwise, a lot of names will show up, and you probably wouldn't even notice it unless you type really slowly. if even seeing your ex's name briefly as you type is too much of an emotional rollercoaster for you (this is probably unhealthy btw) then you could always remove them from your contact list.
then you conclude with standard internet + working/dating observations that have already been made by everyone. these are your more interesting questions? sorry, i don't agree.
In my own experience as an undergraduate at UCSC, not very many people carried laptops; perhaps it was different at other universities.
In an edit of this blog I had changed it to something like "less interesting" but it got lost and skipped in the tumblr preview-edit-publish steps I took before I hit publish. I do find these questions around personal digital archives interesting, but not as interesting as the human interactions that can be centered around them.
The gmail letter monopoly debate is an interesting one. In my gmail, the person with any particular first initial appears first when i type that letter. for frequently emailed persons, I just hit their letter and hit enter (of course with overlap). Persons from past relationships are often people I keep in contact with, but not as frequently as the first-initial-hit-enter type of communication.
The dichotomies at the end are obv. not new points, but interesting entry points for a discussion. I'm writing this blog as a document of ideas that arise in my life amidst all of the different media work I'm doing, and I really appreciate the conversation. Keep reading, I'd love to discuss!
i guess that's fair, but i'm not sure i really understand the distinction. if they're archives of personal interactions (e.g. chatlogs, message boards, etc) then aren't the human interactions already there? if you're the only one involved, the players in the interaction then become you as you are now and you as you were long ago. i still think that's an interesting interaction. maybe you disagree?
i'm not sure how gmail's ordering works - for me, when i type 'a', the first match is someone whose last name begins with 'a', which takes precedence over another contact whose first name is 'aaron', and i speak with aaron a lot more than i do with the other 'a' match. however when i type 'c', a first name match has precedence over a last name match.
in my opinion they should be sorted by some heuristic that takes into account frequency of contact and prominence of letter (e.g. 'd' and 'r' would cause your name to appear higher than 'm', even though your name contains an 'm').
The gmail thing is a bit complex which is why I didn't really get into it, but what I was trying to get across was the fact that even long after I'd more or less moved on from the memories, my gmail's "memory" retained my preference for contacting this person long beyond when I was regularly contacting him. I've since moved on and so has my gmail, but I was trying to get across (in, perhaps to my detriment, the simplest way possible) the fact that my gmail has a memory, and I have memories and sometimes what I'm working on moving away from is still digitally "remembered" as something that once was a larger part of my life. It's no great shakes on its own as a concept, but I posted this with great curiosity to see how others deal with similar problems, relating back to the first point that it's human interaction that makes digital data fascinating to me.
I'd love to have your thoughts on this blog from time to time, so feel free to stick around and challenge me on anything. :)
Number of people on Earth (in 1998):
5,592,830,000
For me, I am only interested in women, of which there are approximately: 2,941,118,000
I am unlikely to marry a woman that was raised in a radically different situation from me. So, I will tailor my search to ladies from ‘first world’ countries. We are much more likely to share similar values, hobbies, and customs. Now we are at approximately:
605,601,000
Because I am neither a pedophile nor a gerophile, I would like to restrict my search for love to those whose age is approximately equal to my own, so somewhere between 21 and 27. These stats are a bit tricky to estimate because census data is divided into quantiles, but that leaves me with approximately:
65,399,083
It is really important for me to have a woman that is highly intelligent and passionate about something. So, for a girl to be considered really brilliant to me, she should fall at least two standard deviations above the norm. That gives us about:
1,487838
I would like to have a woman that was beautiful (inside & out). Beauty is probably normally distributed amongst the population. I would be pleased if she fell at least one standard deviation above the norm, which gives me about:
236,053
I would imagine about 50% of these brilliant, pretty girls are committed, so the number drops to:
118,027
Finally, just because I think the girl is the bee’s knees, doesn’t mean she is going to like me. I think I am a handsome, intelligent, and fun guy. But, alas, not every girl falls for my charms. Let’s say that a girl will date me if she thinks I am a standard deviation above ‘average’, so that gives us about:
18,726 potential ‘true loves’
So, if I went on blind dates with all eligible women (irregardless of beauty or intelligence), I would have to go on about 3,493 dates to find one of my 18,726 potential mates out of the 65,399,083 potential ladies out there.
“Casual dating in an age of ubiquitous computing” could help me find my true love sooner. It may occasionally cause my stone-age brain distress, anxiety or confusion, but as a scientist, I think it has the potential to make me a lot more happy in the long run. What do you think?
This is a really fascinating response--I feel like it could be it's own whole post somewhere. I see that with online technologies (and now statistics to prove it!) one can curate the experience of finding persons of interest. But what then? Your stats only address up to meeting point, run it by me again, but with stats for awkwardness on gchat and email/uncertainty whether an interaction was truly work/school related or instigated by anterior motives (to either my delight or dismay, depending)/how casual drinks or coffee with someone fits in to my pretty much constant connection to the internet...
Interestingly enough, meeting someone, facebooking them, following them on twitter, and commenting on their blog is probably the perfect example of confusing behavior that puzzles both of us. ;)