Online Dating: the future is now

Fluffy Cats.psd

We're all playing with technology around here: I'm fixated on photoshopping pictures and paintings; Dylan's dubbing his mini-movies; Aidan's programming his new cell phone (a present for his 12th birthday, which is tomorrow) and playing RuneScape; and Julia's playing Poppit! Peter, meanwhile, is sharing his Burning Man photos with friends. We all have email; there are four computers on our home wireless system; three cellphones, one land line/fax, a scanner, a printer, three digital cameras, and a bunch of random accessories.

Yesterday's technology stands silent. Two TVs, a couple CD/radio sound systems, several old cameras, laptops, telephones, tape recorders, a VCR, a DVD player, and so on. Nobody's using them.

The adoption cycle for new technologies is almost (but not quite) frightening. We are far from the most literate family, technologically, around here. Hell, there are at least a half dozen wireless networks accessible from this house, which is one indication, but people more into gadgets than I am own fancier versions of everything around here, and additional toys/utensils that don't appeal to me.

As I watch my children manipulate technologies to their purposes, it's easy to see why there's no turning back. These tools are not only way too much fun, they are essential for how my children will live and learn and work. They are the platforms from which their creativity and their social contributions will be launched, as well as the basis for how they maintain their social networks and make new friends.

***

Being a father, especially as a single father, seems to give me a lens for peering into the future.In a few months, when I become for the first time a grandfather, I suspect this lens will expand its reach. Right now, when I think ahead, it is the years 2035-2057 that seem within my grasp. Those are the years that each of my children, successively, will reach the age I am now. My new little grandson will push that horizon out another eight years.

Of course, unless I become the oldest man in the world, I will be long gone by then. It is, in fact, weird, strange and perhaps somewhat perverse to honestly consider the odds I would have to beat to make it to the first year of that span, 2035. Actuaries would certainly calculate my demise as somewhere between now and then, particularly if they had access to all pertinent information. I suspect most of the older Baby Boomers (as a cohort, we are now 43-60) feel the way I do -- that our time is limited, so why not tell the truth, reach for meaning, contribute whatever we have to offer, while we still retain our vitality.

I imagine that one thing some of my kids and grandkids will decide to do is explore the digital archives of their forebearers. It is sad that our history for all intents and purposes will have started with the invention of the world wide web, but that differs from the present only in degree. For young people today, the world before TV and movies is vague and ill-formed.

Of course, academics will continue to make use of the books and other written documents that still form the bulk of our intellectual heritage in the early part of this 21st century. But this is really the end of that era, the hegemony of the written word. We are reverting to an older model -- the oral tradition -- via email and other interactive communication channels...talk/writing, write/talking, chatting,SkypeOuting, i.e., connecting with each other from anywhere, to anywhere, anytime, all over the world in ways traditionally confined to our ancestral villages.

The implications of this transformation are awesome. Consider the most basic human interaction -- how new couples meet. A friend familiar with the studies tells me that 30% of people who meet online eventually meet in person. The majority of them then have sex.

Sounds like a new paradigm to me.

Sort of like Fluffy Cats, as adjusted.