A few years ago I read a book, Super Sad True Love Story, a dystopian love story about people obsessed with superficiality driven by their wearable technology. The wearables, called "apparats" in the book, allow everyone to see instantly how everyone rates everyone else's attractiveness, called a "fuckability" rating, in a bar or any other social environment. Everyone rates everyone, constantly. The book was published in 2010 and in the three years since I read it, I've seen many aspects of the book slowly come true.
Imagine my horror when I discovered a new app, Lulu, which allows women to rate men with a number evaluation and hashtags such as "#ObsessedWithHisMom and #GoneByMorning." Despite Lulu's claim that this is "unleashing the power of girl talk" and my position as a proud feminist, let me confirm that I find this app straight up creepy, not to mention cruel. No one should have to have to relive a history of dating missteps each time they meet someone new. Many men agreed that apps like Lulu aren't ethical, and in response Lulu has now required that men opt-in to the site.
How long will it be before technology like this is wearable and part of augmented reality? How long will it be before your Tinder "swipe yes's" are recorded and shared? Before your crowdsourced physical desirability is viewable in glasses or contact lenses? What effect could this have on our dating behavior?
In this video, one woman takes a comedic look at how Google glasses might affect men's dating behavior.
Pushing the bounds of wearable apps, we can envision more disturbing situations, as seen in the video "Sight" below:
How ethical is it for someone to research you on social networks before a date? For them to use an app to improve their dating "performance"? Are these technologies a boon for the socially awkward or a manipulation of your dating partner?
Personally, I'm a bit old-fashioned about this stuff. If I pay more attention to my phone than my dinner date, at the end all I've earned is a closer relationship with my device. I do my best to keep my phone in my bag, but wearables combined with augmented reality technology imply that our attention has the potential to be constantly divided. The idea of a guy using an app to take me home would certainly feel like a manipulation... if I found out. But what if I didn't? Would ignorance be bliss?
It's possible that companies that advocate for wearables and the associated apps will succeed in shifting public opinion to become comfortable with these technologies and potential privacy invasions that they present. Alternatively, some trends indicate that people are becoming less comfortable with their private information being public, even on current social media. For example, many reports indicate that teens are abandoning Facebook and flocking to Whatsapp and Snapchat precisely because these apps allow them to more strictly control the audience that sees their information.
My prediction is that we will become more comfortable with wearables at the same time as we seek to share personal information with only a smaller, tighter network of who we consider our real friends, not our "facebook friends."
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