Really interesting, provocative article here from Time magazine by Apryl Williams, Assistant Professor of Communication and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan, on how dating apps insert and perpetuate race- and appearance-based parameters into technology intended to help people find someone to love and build a romantic relationship with. This opinion piece on dating apps offers up an argument that the digital “machine” amplifies humanity’s weaknesses (like the conscious and unconscious biases that narrow our outlook) and 2) diminishes/minimizes humanity’s intuitive ways of knowing, one example of which is the magical spark of recognition that suddenly makes us aware that we’ve found a kindred spirit in another person. Finding our soulmate, becoming friends with people who truly “get” us and value us for who we are—these are some of the most important things we’ll ever do in life. This “seeking out” requires that we journey through a mysterious landscape shrouded in a fog of uncertainty and contradiction. The “if/then” reasoning of a binary “swipe left/right” system is completely at odds with the non-rational, chaotic serendipity of unexpected encounters, attraction of opposites, against-all-odds coincidences, and other logic-defying “inexplicables” of human experience.
As Shakespeare says of Cleopatra, “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety.” Loving another person goes hand in hand with unpredictability, delight, drama, pain, and unbounded lifelong discovery. No matter how carefully designed an algorithm might be, it is still a functionally closed system. Love, on the other hand, amounts to the most open system in the universe.
If my comments above make any sense to you, and they are more my “take” (okay, “rant”😀) on the article more than a summary, I highly recommend clicking over and giving this a read.
Katherine Wikoff 
Ah…dating. The most tantalizing, painful, magnificent human endeavor. AI would say, “Can’t we just skip all that and find the right person for you, quickly and reliably?” How boring.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Clearly the technology has a serious downside. Its only real advantage is allowing a person to meet lots of people well outside their normal circles. Finding someone who “gets you” firstly depends on actually finding someone — a challenge for many.
I met my ex-wife on an early dating app back in the late 1990s. That relationship flamed out in a big way. After the divorce I tried Match-dot-com and a few others, but never came close to a match (I’m a hard one to match; kind of a major odd duck).
Long ago, I tried the personal ads in the paper, and it was largely the same thing. It always boils down to how you react when you actually meet and spend some time together. The only value in the technology I can see is expanding one’s reach to meet people you never would encounter in your daily life.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The time.com article was fascinating. One comment stood out: “…evidence suggests that conservatives prefer thin white blondes.” Ah ha, I thought, that explains Fox News!
LikeLiked by 1 person