a brief history of statistical/computer dating...

From Dara Horn in the WSJ...

Singles suffering through a lonely winter may soon have a new way to break the ice. Students at the University of Maine recently announced a prototype for a wearable matchmaking device called the "Friend Finder." The gadget, programmed with information about the wearer's interests and tastes, features a series of LED lights that flash whenever another user with compatible interests is within 30 feet -- allowing humans to mimic the romantic signaling of fireflies.

If it gets off the ground, the "Friend Finder" would become the latest offshoot of the enormous computer-dating industry, which today's singles have come to rely on in their search for love. But those who think of technology-assisted dating as a relatively new phenomenon couldn't be more wrong. My parents met in 1966 through the world's first computer-dating service. I am the second of their four children, and they have been married for nearly 40 years....

Astonishingly, the concept of computer dating did not originate in some lonely teenager's garage, but rather at the pinnacle of America's intellectual establishment. In 1965, Harvard University was one of the few institutions with access to an IBM 7090, a $3 million room-filling machine intended, according to IBM's 1960 press release, to "speed the design of missiles, jet engines, nuclear reactors and supersonic aircraft."

It ended up speeding the design of me.

"Operation Match," as the program was named, was created by a few undergraduates (one of whom, Douglas Ginsburg, later became a Supreme Court nominee) who realized that Cold War technology could be harnessed for love. College students nationwide were invited to fill out a questionnaire and mail it with a $3 fee to Harvard, where the computer would provide five or more "compatible matches" within the student's geographic area. My parents were attending different colleges in Philadelphia and had no mutual friends or contacts. Their six grandchildren also owe their lives to Operation Match.

What determined one's romantic "compatibility" in 1965? Many of the program's questions are familiar, though some choice-categories for answers are startling....

But what truly makes Operation Match seem quaint today was the absolute faith with which the computer's results were received. The wildly popular service processed more than a million questionnaires from students nationwide within three years, and its success reveals less about computer programming than about social norms....

My father's indisputable printout was framed in my childhood home: "Dear Mr. Horn: Below are the names of six women from your area with whom you are most compatible." My mother's name was the fifth on the list. This posed an existential question for me and my siblings: What if my father had married one of the other five? Or gotten bored with the search service after No. 4? Fortunately for his heirs, my father, at age 18, was intent on getting his three dollars' worth. "Sure," he admitted to me once, glancing at the list, "I went out with all of them."

For women, it was more of a waiting game. Despite the advanced technology, traditional dating customs persisted....

Some services today, like eHarmony, employ elaborate compatibility questionnaires in the spirit of Operation Match -- often building on psychological testing developed in the 1960s....

Yet our attitudes toward these programs, and even toward marriage, are radically different from our parents'. Now that everyone has a computer in his or her pocket, technology is no longer regarded with awe or trust -- and now that a large percentage of marriages end in divorce, marriage doesn't always inspire much faith either....