Technology is changing everything. How we interact with each other, how we pick the places we go to, how we get to those places and how we behave once we’re there.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be exploring a topic where I pick a certain facet of daily living and predict how it will change in the next ten years. The reason I chose 10 years as opposed to 50 or 100, is 10 is close enough that the dynamics of the world today will still (hopefully) apply.
BUT 50 or 100 years from now is so far removed that if I were to try and explain that era using current vernacular, it wouldn’t make any sense. For instance if you tried to explain Facebook or Apple to someone in 1917, they wouldn’t come close to comprehending all that those companies have achieved. So let’s fast forward to the year 2027.
More specifically-dating in 2027.
Finding that special somebody 10 years from now won’t be such a struggle anymore because talking to potential love interests will be the next great modern convenience.
Just as the microwave revolutionized domestic cooking, technology will make finding love as simple as making a hot pocket, if not simpler. All we have to do is sit back and relax because we'll be putting zero effort in actually finding people to date. Technology does it for us.
We’ll never have to build a profile based on what we THINK we want from a partner. The system will have more than enough information to find someone who ACTUALLY suits our needs.
Dating in the year 2027 will be entirely based on probability and metrics. Online dating sites along with dating apps will go the way of the dinosaur. All the major communication companies will have merged together to create a conglomerate that’s recorded and logged all of our texts, tweets, social media posts, emails, words we’ve said on the phone, online purchases we’ve made, our credit card history, browser history, internet surfing tendencies, shows we’ve watched, videos we’ve seen, songs we’ve listened to, pictures we’ve uploaded etc.
This system will have the sophistication to gage our dialect, sense of humor, rhythm of speech, and the vocabulary we use most. We know something like this will come into fruition soon because the genesis of it is already happening today.
This system will have the capability to weed out all the communication we’ve ever had with love interests in the past, and build a portfolio based on what we’ve positively or negatively respond to.
If we have a digital track record of negative reactions when past lovers didn’t text back right away, the system will put a premium on finding someone that responds promptly to text messages.
If we'd always get into a fight with a former partner when we talked about carnival rides, the system will find someone who brings up Six Flags/amusement parks less than 0.0001% of the time.
If our ex-boyfriend/girlfriend wouldn’t praise us as often as we wished, the system will find someone with a high compliment tendency.
Based on this gigantic cloud of information, the system will match us with the person whose results both mirror and compliment us the best.
Once this match is made, we will receive an alert on our phone. The system already documents our daily schedules so it will setup an optimal time for us to meet with our match. Chances are the meeting will be a café that we both love, or a restaurant that we've both referenced in previous conversations. Doing this increases the probability of success by about 2.4% since we will ease right into the conversation with engaging personal stories about our ties to the venue.
The most exciting/unfortunate aspect of dating in 2027 is the prospects of a second, third, fourth date etc. Once the date’s over, it won’t be up to us to decide whether we'll see that person again or not. The system perpetually measures the probability of potential success with our matches against the pool of other candidates who may have unknowingly improved their stock with a new hobby/interest/behavior.
In the year 2027 we’ll be saying goodbye to all the unnecessary fluff that accompanies trying to find a suitable mate. Instead of trusting our own judgement and gut feeling (which can be wildly inaccurate) we opt for a system whose methods are far more rational than human emotions and feelings: mathematics.
That way we stop wasting our time trying to find the right people and more time genuinely engaging with individuals who have a high probability of satisfying our long term desires.
Who needs autonomy when we can have convenience? All we have to do is show up and be ourselves. The rest will take care of itself. Doesn’t that sound lovely?
