Can you guess what this has to do with real estate?
Yesterday
in 1650 — that's 360 years ago — the first documented dating service
began. It was announced in a pamphlet by a man named Henry Robinson who
advertised what he called his "Office of Addresses" over on
Threadneedle Street in London. The pamphlet was essentially a directory
of contact information — a sort of precursor to a Yellow Pages or People
Pages, back before there were phones, or before houses or businesses
were regularly given numbered street addresses.
With this valuable resource he compiled, Robinson could answer clients' questions on things like what jobs or real estate or trade opportunities might be available.
With this valuable resource he compiled, Robinson could answer clients' questions on things like what jobs or real estate or trade opportunities might be available.
One
of the services he provided was "marriage brokerage." Using his
directory of addresses to determine who was single and marriageable and
where he or she lived and worked, he would set people up to go on dates.
His service cost sixpence — but if you were poor, then it was free.
The
evolution of dating systems has been closely linked to technology.
There was video dating in the 1980s, where suitors made VHS tapes of
themselves at a video-dating facility and others could come in and view
the videos of potential dates from the singles video library. Around the
same time, "phone dating" took off. It relied on then-new voice mail
technology.
Americans spent more than $500 million on online dating in 2005, and this year that figure is closer to $900 million. Some researchers have predicted that "virtual dating" is the next big thing. In virtual dating, singles use avatars — from a Sanskrit word related to incarnation, and now also defined by Merriam-Webster as "an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user" — to interact and chat with another single on a virtual date.
That virtual date may take place in an intimate restaurant in Rome, or an art museum in New York, or as a stroll through a South American rainforest — but the suitors are still sitting at their computers at home the whole time. A 2007 Scientific American article reported that Harvard and MIT researchers found that "people who had a chance to interact with each other (by computer only) on a virtual tour of a museum subsequently had more successful face-to-face meetings than people who had viewed only profiles."
In 2002, Rufus Griscom wrote in Wired magazine: "Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love without looking for it online will be silly, akin to skipping the card catalog to instead wander the stacks because 'the right books are found only by accident.' … Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets, and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient."
Americans spent more than $500 million on online dating in 2005, and this year that figure is closer to $900 million. Some researchers have predicted that "virtual dating" is the next big thing. In virtual dating, singles use avatars — from a Sanskrit word related to incarnation, and now also defined by Merriam-Webster as "an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user" — to interact and chat with another single on a virtual date.
That virtual date may take place in an intimate restaurant in Rome, or an art museum in New York, or as a stroll through a South American rainforest — but the suitors are still sitting at their computers at home the whole time. A 2007 Scientific American article reported that Harvard and MIT researchers found that "people who had a chance to interact with each other (by computer only) on a virtual tour of a museum subsequently had more successful face-to-face meetings than people who had viewed only profiles."
In 2002, Rufus Griscom wrote in Wired magazine: "Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love without looking for it online will be silly, akin to skipping the card catalog to instead wander the stacks because 'the right books are found only by accident.' … Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets, and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient."
Thanks to The Writer's Almanac
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