YOU are shopping on a Saturday afternoon, or perhaps bopping at a club on Friday night. You hear a soft beeping from the badge on your lapel. As you move, the signal grows stronger. Suddenly, your eyes lock onto your soulmate . . .
Don鈥檛 laugh鈥攐r head for the hills. Technology has done much to impersonalise modern life says Rick Borovoy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology鈥檚 Media Lab. But if it could be moved into the personal sphere, it could help us to make friends and find love. At conferences, it could trigger excited conversations between academics with the exact same interests and in business it could offer the chance to make a billion: Mr Hewlett meet Mr Packard.
Borovoy dubs it computationally augmented human interaction, and the first wave has broken already. At MIT, he鈥檚 tried the idea in a variety of forms to break the ice at meetings. But its biggest impact so far has been on the street, where marketeers are promoting gizmos with names such as Lovegety and Friend.Link as the modern way to make friends and meet lovers. They may be onto something. Recent research suggests that many people 鈥渕ake do鈥� when it comes to the relationships they forge because they do not search systematically for truly compatible partners or friends. So 鈥渓ove buttons鈥� could, potentially, spark as big a social revolution as the Internet.
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The Lovegety鈥攁 hit in Japan鈥攈ints at what the future might bring. It is a pendant-shaped radio transmitter able to send out offers of six activities: 鈥渇un鈥�, 鈥渄ance鈥�, 鈥渓ove鈥�, 鈥渕ovie鈥�, 鈥渃hat鈥� or 鈥渄rink鈥�. When a pink plastic female Lovegety comes within a few metres of a blue plastic male Lovegety on a similar setting, a green light flashes. Bolder owners can set it to make an excited beeping that makes their intentions audible to all.
A few forty-something men confessed to some embarrassment when trying out their Lovegetys in public because most of the other wearers seemed to be Japanese schoolgirls. But even as a summer gimmick, the gizmo was an intriguing social experiment. And now more sophisticated systems are starting to hit the market, such as Friend.Link, which was developed in the US and can broadcast a potted summary of your interests and hobbies for matchmaking purposes. Friend.Link, which again is aimed mainly at teenagers, can also transmit short pager messages to any other system within an 8-metre radius, so a coy come-on line can be flashed to the object of desire.
Back at MIT, Borovoy groans at the very idea of a love button. He and his fellow developers at the Media Lab鈥檚 鈥淭hings that Think鈥� programme had much more high-minded motives when they began work on the idea in 1996. Well, actually, Borovoy admits that what got them started was the need for a stunt for the lab鈥檚 10th birthday celebration.
Talking toasters
鈥淓veryone mentioned the obvious ideas that you have when you talk about putting intelligence into everyday objects, like having your toaster talk to your television,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut then we thought about what would actually be useful at such an event and came up with the computationally augmented name tag.鈥�
The 鈥渢hinking tag鈥� was a lapel badge with the wearer鈥檚 name and job description. But along the top it had five light-emitting diodes that revealed the wearer鈥檚 answers to five questions鈥攇entle teasers along the lines of 鈥淲ith whom would you rather have dinner: O. J. Simpson, Noam Chomsky or Peter Gabriel?鈥� Conference-goers would key in their answers when they arrived. Then, whenever two of them came face to face, their badges would use an infrared link to compare responses. If they agreed on all questions a row of green lights showed. If they disagreed on a couple, then two red lights replaced two greens.
Borovoy chuckles: 鈥淲e had some funny scenes. Some people were going around holding their tags at arm鈥檚 length, scanning the room to find five green lights or five red lights,鈥� he says. 鈥淎 senior executive and his junior came up with four reds and I thought, `Uh, oh!鈥� But the senior guy handled it really well and said, `Good, that means we must be complementary.鈥� What he actually thought might have been another matter, though.鈥�
Since then, the Media Lab has moved on to 鈥渕eme tags鈥� and 鈥渃ommunity mirrors鈥�. The meme tag has more memory and a liquid crystal display just large enough to flash up a one-liner such as: 鈥淚f it wasn鈥檛 for the last minute, nothing would get done,鈥� or something more serious, such as: 鈥淜eyboards as we know them will disappear by the year 2010.鈥� The idea is that when they register, conference-goers have their lapel badges seeded with a random selection of these attention-grabbing 鈥渕emes鈥�. If they are feeling more inventive, they can write their own. Then, as they circulate, they either stick with the memes they鈥檝e got, or, at the click of a button, swap for better ones spotted on someone else鈥檚 badge. So some memes will spread while others are forgotten.
Community mirrors are giant displays that the MIT researchers scatter around a conference room to show the present popularity of the memes in circulation. Whenever a tag comes within range of a mirror, it automatically dumps its record of the wearer鈥檚 interactions. As well as charting the success of an idea, the system can put up statistics revealing the identity of the 鈥渢op schmoozer鈥� in the room, and whether different groups of people are mixing. From one conference came the not terribly surprising finding that business visitors mingled widely, while MIT students spoke to the fewest people鈥攁nd then usually to fellow students.
These prototypes, which matched people on just five questions or merely exchanged wisecracks, were deliberately limited because loading up the badges with the results of, say, heavy-duty personality tests would have led the conference-goers to expect too much, too soon from a fledgling system. Indeed, something jokey was needed or things could have turned nasty.
Just what to store in tags to keep everyone happy has been addressed by another thinking tag developer, Michelle McDonald, who has since left MIT to sell a commercialised version, called Matchstick, to places such as nightclubs. 鈥淚magine some guy coming up to you, seeing five red lights go off, then simply turning on his heels. That would be awful,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e had to use slightly goofy questions rather than anything too serious, so people would use the badges as ice-breakers鈥攁 way to get into conversations rather than feel they were something that had to be obeyed.鈥�
The badges鈥� next incarnation is planned to be more high-powered. Borovoy intends to match people by their intellectual or business interests鈥攁 genuine problem at conferences and conventions for people who need to make best use of their time. 鈥淏usiness people can pay $5000 to get to some of the big shows. Then they end up just talking to people they already know,鈥� he says. 鈥淎n active badge could short-circuit the search.鈥�
Meeting of minds
One possibility is to match visiting academics by their citations. Every delegate would download 30 favourite references onto their badge鈥攅ach reference being represented as a simple code to keep the computational demands low. Then, when two of them meet, the badges would display not just a citation that they have in common, but also one that is unusual by comparison with the rest of the conference. 鈥淚f you find you share what is an uncommon area of interest with someone else, it seems likely you鈥檒l want to stop and talk to that person,鈥� Borovoy reasons.
In everyday life, Borovoy feels that people may use such a system for the same reasons they turned to the Internet. In a world where everyone has increasingly individualised interests, it becomes harder to find people who share them. Putting the emphasis on scanning the streets for interesting conversations rather than life-partners could makes badge technology a more acceptable prospect.
More needs to be learnt about issues such as the obtrusiveness of the tags, he reckons. Flashing lights or frantic beeps might keep everything above board, but at other times, a more discreet alarm, such as a pager that vibrates in a pocket, would be better. The tags might also need a number of disclosure modes so they broadcast only a basic level of information, and raise the level when circumstances are right.
While Borovoy pursues his lofty ideals, he knows that the cheapness and power of the technology will allow it to appear in other guises. The Media Lab tags, with an 8-bit microprocessor and 128 kilobytes of memory, were already more powerful than most early personal computers. Now, just a few years later, still more powerful hardware is available off-the-shelf. Dallas Semiconductor鈥檚 iButton, for example, is a steel-jacketed device the size of a large aspirin that is designed to be mounted on a signet ring or pendant and sells for a few dollars.
The real unknown is the social question of whether anyone can write software that will spot good matches in a crowd of strangers鈥攆or love, friendship or just a chat. Sandra Murray, a social psychologist at the University of Buffalo in New York State, concedes there might be something in Borovoy鈥檚 goal of matching people on a purely intellectual or business basis. But she is sceptical, because people with similar interests already meet by hanging out in similar, interest-centred places.
When it comes to finding a lover, she positively scoffs at the idea. 鈥淭he whole notion that you could load up all this information about yourself and then wait for the badge to go beep鈥攖hat鈥檚 just based on so many misconceptions about how people become attached to each other.鈥�
Murray believes badges will surely prove a disappointment. She says psychologists showed long ago that no matter what people might say about seeking compatibility in their soulmates, physical attractiveness normally ranks one, two and three in the list of essential attributes. Well, maybe social status and bank balance also sneak into the equation but, Murray says, compatibility only comes into it in a rather surprising way.
Her research suggests that what makes people happy in a relationship is believing they have compatible personalities rather than actually being well matched. 鈥淧eople just leap in assuming they are similar,鈥� says Murray. 鈥淎nd of course people鈥檚 personalities are not static. They change . . . Because of the positive construction each places on the other, they work to become more alike. Or at least they will perceive themselves as being alike.鈥�
It鈥檚 true that being similarly scored on the social scientist鈥檚 standard list of personality characteristics鈥攖raits such as the 鈥渂ig five鈥� of agreeableness, openness, extroversion, neuroticism and reliablility is usually a good thing, says Murray, because at least it means there is less chance of a new couple鈥檚 illusions being shattered. But she is quick to tip cold water on the idea that all of us have the perfect partner out there somewhere. She believes we can become satisfyingly close to just about anyone if we put a positive twist on the relationship.
Regan Gurung, who researches into relationships at the University of Wisconsin, agrees. It is, after all, why arranged marriages can work. But he argues that matching personality types and interests are important in lasting relationships. So technology might help to redress the balance against our more superficial ways of seeking partners.
But exactly what sort of information should be on a badge is harder to say. Gurung feels that a list of hobbies and interests would certainly be a start. As for personality traits, his work suggests that matching on levels of self-esteem might come surprisingly high up the list. Gurung says people with a high opinion of themselves feel most comfortable with other 鈥渟elf-affirming鈥� types, while perhaps unexpectedly, low self-esteem people prefer others with an equally poor self-image. 鈥淚t seems people want their relationships to verify their beliefs about themselves, even if this means confirming a poor self-opinion,鈥� says Gurung.
After self-esteem, would come extroversion and perhaps neuroticism, leaving other traits, such as reliability, low in the ratings. Turning bullish, Gurung says that well-designed matching software might achieve a success rate鈥攚here people are pleased to be introduced鈥攐f about 60 to 65 per cent. 鈥淚t wouldn鈥檛 generate a perfect match every time, but it could definitely increase your chances,鈥� he says.
Of course, if caution were thrown to the wind, it could be possible to plug in whatever kind of data leads to successful matches. Badges might be programmed to broadcast a person鈥檚 bank balance and professional status. Or adapting the Media Lab鈥檚 meme tag approach, other people could rate your physical attractiveness, clicking their badges to confirm or dispute the message you are broadcasting.
How badge technology evolves will depend on public reaction, and for now love buttons seem to be making the running. Brian Curin, marketeer for the English version of the Lovegety, says the big problem today is just getting enough gizmos out there to make it worthwhile for a person to buy one. In Japan, they were given away to seed demand. Curin prefers to rent out a few hundred devices to a conference or singles bar to spread the word. He predicts that after a slow start, there should be an explosive growth for anyone who hits on a people-matching system with all the right features.
So, social engineering technology looks set to creep into our lives through a range of niche markets鈥攆rom the teenage novelty purchase to the high-flown conference delegate鈥攂efore perhaps blossoming into a tool that even your granny might use. Who knows, one day it could lure the pasty-faced hordes away from their Internet chat rooms and back out onto the streets again.