Science fiction dating

It's fun to see how science fiction influences real-world technology. Sometimes it simply provides a name for a new concept, such as cyberspace, robot, waldo, and the metaverse.

Other times it serves as an inspiration that leads to an actual breakthrough, such as talking computers and direct neural interfaces. Either way, it can point to a possible future.

Movies and TV

So what does science fiction have to say about dating? Here are some shows where dating played a part.

Black Mirror. In the episode Hang the DJ, the characters find themselves in a strange world where they're assigned to random relationships, each with an expiration date. Spoiler alert. They're simulated characters in a simulated world, and the simulation runs a thousand times with minor variations to see how often they end up together, thus calculating a compatibility score.

As far as dating technology is concerned, this is the gold standard. You know two people are compatible because they were compatible, 994 times out of 1000. The only drawback is that you'd have to run a simulation for every possible pair of people to find perfect matches, and the cloud computing bills would be crippling!

Logan's Run. In this classic movie from 1976 there's a scene where Logan uses The Circuit, a service where a series of potential partners teleport into an alcove in his room. If they like the look of each other, the partner steps out of the alcove for some casual sex. If not, Logan twiddles the dial and a new person appears.

As hookup apps go, the efficiency of this technology is hard to beat.

The One. This Netflix series starts with a dating app called The One, which matches people based on their DNA. I haven't seen this series, but apparently it veers off-topic fairly quickly, with dating app used as a premise to bring the characters together, and never mentioned again.

The idea of DNA-based matching has been around for years, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence for it. It's hypothesised that DNA affects pheromonal attraction, possibly to reduce sexual attraction among close relatives, but the data is inconclusive. In any case, it's easy to think of counter-examples where DNA matching would always be wrong, such as when there's a significant age difference.

Osmosis. Another Netflix series, this time set in Paris, with a dating app called Osmosis that matches people by injecting nanobots into their brains and mining their thoughts and emotions. Again, I haven't seen this series, so I don't have much to say.

Upload. This Amazon comedy is set in a world where people can upload to virtual worlds, and one of the characters, Nora, uses a dating app called Nightly.

The app is nothing special technology-wise, although it appears to use algorithmic matching. No, it's noteworthy mostly for the name Nightly: the perfect name for a casual hookup app.

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