Does love compute?
March 5, 2014 7:38 AM Subscribe
In 1966, I started one of the world’s first computer dating services. One problem: I had no computer.
if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it does it make any noise?
You have to ask the questions in the form of a true or false statement or the computer will never find your true love.
posted by three blind mice at 7:54 AM on March 5, 2014
You have to ask the questions in the form of a true or false statement or the computer will never find your true love.
posted by three blind mice at 7:54 AM on March 5, 2014
That's how my parents met, punch cards and all. Still together to this day and I don't think there's anybody else out there in the world for either of them (to put it most diplomatically).
(I suppose that makes me just as weird by proxy (progeny?) but I'll accept that.)
posted by iamkimiam at 8:07 AM on March 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
(I suppose that makes me just as weird by proxy (progeny?) but I'll accept that.)
posted by iamkimiam at 8:07 AM on March 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
Why would computers want to date each other?
posted by blue_beetle at 8:11 AM on March 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by blue_beetle at 8:11 AM on March 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
So your parents met on retro Okcupid, that's cool. Mine met each other through VHS video dating and it didn't go so well. (no really, they did)
posted by oceanjesse at 8:13 AM on March 5, 2014
posted by oceanjesse at 8:13 AM on March 5, 2014
My dad winked at my mom on a bus while he was stationed in Oregon while on leave for the Navy. And from there almost 18 years later, I was born.
I still live with my ex who I started dating after finding on Friend Finder. We get along well enough, so it worked, somehow. OKCupid, I'm having much worse results.
Thank god for internet porn, at least. *sigh*
posted by symbioid at 8:21 AM on March 5, 2014
I still live with my ex who I started dating after finding on Friend Finder. We get along well enough, so it worked, somehow. OKCupid, I'm having much worse results.
Thank god for internet porn, at least. *sigh*
posted by symbioid at 8:21 AM on March 5, 2014
In 1966, I started one of the world’s first computer dating services. One problem: I had no computer.
This sounds like a the beginning of a short story that is a thinly veiled account of my sorry relationship track record before I met my wife.
posted by vorpal bunny at 8:57 AM on March 5, 2014
This sounds like a the beginning of a short story that is a thinly veiled account of my sorry relationship track record before I met my wife.
posted by vorpal bunny at 8:57 AM on March 5, 2014
My dad met my mom by a bread warmer in Elvis Presley's favorite hotel in Denver.
See, technology has alway brought people together!
(The hotel eventually became an infamous, massive crack den. A fact my dad was unaware of when he took me there to show me the momentous spot.)
posted by vorpal bunny at 9:00 AM on March 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
See, technology has alway brought people together!
(The hotel eventually became an infamous, massive crack den. A fact my dad was unaware of when he took me there to show me the momentous spot.)
posted by vorpal bunny at 9:00 AM on March 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
Two of my exes are two of my best friends today. One I met on match.com, and the other I met via the print personal ads in the back of the erstwhile New York Press.
I also just started sorta-kinda-casually seeing someone I met via OKCupid, although that came after a SHIT-TON of bad OKC luck - but I'm chalking that more up to "the past five years just sucked overall" than "OKCupid is at fault".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:05 AM on March 5, 2014
I also just started sorta-kinda-casually seeing someone I met via OKCupid, although that came after a SHIT-TON of bad OKC luck - but I'm chalking that more up to "the past five years just sucked overall" than "OKCupid is at fault".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:05 AM on March 5, 2014
This was probably a lot more common than Mr. Sutton thinks it was. My dad wrote a similar program for a university fund-raiser at about the same time.
posted by KGMoney at 9:18 AM on March 5, 2014
posted by KGMoney at 9:18 AM on March 5, 2014
Haha, I'd only read the first couple of paragraphs. I should have said that my dad _actually_ wrote something like this, although he did tell me that he got a little lazy with the matching algorithm and made several of the questions automatic disqualifiers, which I guess is kind of similar...
posted by KGMoney at 9:24 AM on March 5, 2014
posted by KGMoney at 9:24 AM on March 5, 2014
I greatly enjoyed this story. Thanks for sharing it.
posted by crazy with stars at 9:38 AM on March 5, 2014
posted by crazy with stars at 9:38 AM on March 5, 2014
That's an adorable story.
It reminds me of Matchmaker, a 1980s-era BBS from Texas that provided online computer dating. I used it briefly in, oh, 1989, and that might even be how I met my first ever boyfriend. Matchmaker made a serious go of it in the Internet era and eventually sold to Lycos for $45M in 2000, then slowly crumbled.
posted by Nelson at 10:13 AM on March 5, 2014
It reminds me of Matchmaker, a 1980s-era BBS from Texas that provided online computer dating. I used it briefly in, oh, 1989, and that might even be how I met my first ever boyfriend. Matchmaker made a serious go of it in the Internet era and eventually sold to Lycos for $45M in 2000, then slowly crumbled.
posted by Nelson at 10:13 AM on March 5, 2014
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No computer? No computer!
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:32 PM on March 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:32 PM on March 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Came here for a clever application of McBee cards, leaving disappointed.
t reminds me of Matchmaker, a 1980s-era BBS from Texas that provided online computer dating. I used it briefly in, oh, 1989, and that might even be how I met my first ever boyfriend. Matchmaker made a serious go of it in the Internet era and eventually sold to Lycos for $45M in 2000, then slowly crumbled.
Met my wife there in 1999 :)
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No computer? No computer!
Still trying to wrap my mind around Act II.
posted by codswallop at 6:23 PM on March 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
t reminds me of Matchmaker, a 1980s-era BBS from Texas that provided online computer dating. I used it briefly in, oh, 1989, and that might even be how I met my first ever boyfriend. Matchmaker made a serious go of it in the Internet era and eventually sold to Lycos for $45M in 2000, then slowly crumbled.
Met my wife there in 1999 :)
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No computer? No computer!
Still trying to wrap my mind around Act II.
posted by codswallop at 6:23 PM on March 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Instead, we . . . took the cards belonging to men and those belonging to women, shuffled them all up together, and made our matches by chance. I had just discovered Camus and was big on the randomness of life.
Really, this is how ALL computer dating systems should work. Ask them all sorts of detailed questions to give them the impression that you are truly gazing into the depth of their souls and matching them up with their soul-mates. Then just randomly shuffle them up see what happens.
It would be really interesting to see a comparison of the success rate of this method vs the supposedly super-sophisticated systems we have nowadays . . .
posted by flug at 9:04 PM on March 5, 2014
Really, this is how ALL computer dating systems should work. Ask them all sorts of detailed questions to give them the impression that you are truly gazing into the depth of their souls and matching them up with their soul-mates. Then just randomly shuffle them up see what happens.
It would be really interesting to see a comparison of the success rate of this method vs the supposedly super-sophisticated systems we have nowadays . . .
posted by flug at 9:04 PM on March 5, 2014
As a grad student at UC Berkeley, during the sixties, my dad developed an assessment that used computer punch-cards as an evaluation tool as his MSW Project/Thesis. I remember him bringing home a thousand punch cards, all carefully notched, and he'd use a brass rod to thread through the holes in the notches and somehow...I'm not sure how it worked, but Jesus help you if your sticky paws went near the box of cards!
Later on, after presenting his system at a conference, he was approached to work with Timothy Leary on something similar, and they met a few times. Leary may have used the idea to produce Mind Mirror, or it may have been something he just wanted to bounce off my Dad. Either way, apparently Leary had a giant pencil sculpture in his living room.
So eventually it went from cards to one of those giant floppy disks that were so popular in the early eighties.
I remember sitting at the dining room table in my parent's house spending fucking HOURS on that damn thing! OMG, how freaking frustrating.
So yeah, punch cards. No thank you.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:46 PM on March 6, 2014
Later on, after presenting his system at a conference, he was approached to work with Timothy Leary on something similar, and they met a few times. Leary may have used the idea to produce Mind Mirror, or it may have been something he just wanted to bounce off my Dad. Either way, apparently Leary had a giant pencil sculpture in his living room.
So eventually it went from cards to one of those giant floppy disks that were so popular in the early eighties.
I remember sitting at the dining room table in my parent's house spending fucking HOURS on that damn thing! OMG, how freaking frustrating.
So yeah, punch cards. No thank you.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:46 PM on March 6, 2014
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posted by Colonel Panic at 7:51 AM on March 5, 2014