Lots of recent articles, and obviously moving to Hong Kong, have made me think about the changing shape of the societies and structures in which we live. Some related musings below.
I’ve been blessed by my age and timing not to ever have to try speed or online dating, and this long discussion in the NYT doesn’t make the latter sound much like fun. However, the breaking out from the traditional friends / work / family sources of life partners is an interesting change. This is something directly pertinent to us, in the area of meeting people and making friends in Hong Kong.
I guess my question is whether the matching algorithms work, at least to get people to meet people outside those core groups. If so, then we should see a growing number of people who met online. I haven’t noticed this, but I may be too old to have been invited to their weddings (although as the article points out, the 50+ online dating group is fast-growing).
Separately, we must be able to find a way to do the “I know whether we are going to like each other in five minutes” without having to meet up for real. Surely Skype and some form of guarantee that the person on the end of the wire is who they say they are and not their more beautiful, wittier older sibling should do the trick? At least for a screening process.
Other barriers that are starting to crumble: Europe is not exciting the young, and they will be the ones that must vote it to remain in place. With all the structural issues currently buffeting it, you could see why they might not be so keen.
Governments simply do not understand how groups like Lulzsec and Anonymous work. The level of access and sophistication that these hackers now have is breathtaking. Nothing is really safe, so let’s thank hackers like these for not being terrorists or wanting to cause real damage (which they clearly could if they wanted to). A slightly-too-numbered article for my taste looks into the opportunity for civil revolution in cyberspace. The idea being that the coming generations will get a large part of their idea of friendship and citizenship from their online activities as well as from the structures we currently have in place.
It is not yet clear what all these new sources of identity, friends, and partners will change and what our future relationships will look like, but they will be both different and the same. Why? Everything comes down to people and their interactions in the end, and changes there take place at a slow, slow pace.