TALKING ACROSS THE GLOBE: Tinder as a prototype for intercontinental serendipity

I’ve been experiencing the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon lately. This is when you discover a new word, concept, song, book, product or whatever and then it seemingly appears everywhere. In my case this has been related to maps and global communications.

After reading The Victorian Internet and it opened my eyes to just how transformative the telegraph was. Pre-telegraph, it took a full day on horseback to deliver a message one hundred miles. The telegraph reduced that to a matter of seconds.

When Samuel Morse and others began building the network (around 1844) it took ten weeks to send a letter and a response between London to Bombay. Thirty years later, with over 650,000 miles of wire, messages could be exchanged between those two cities in less than four minutes.

There was much enthusiasm and a great optimism.

But there were also skeptics. First there was an optical (analog) telegraph – a series of towers with levers that could be seen through a telescope. Messages were viewed and signaled down a line. Many people preferred this model and wanted nothing to do with the electronic information.

TINDER GOES GLOBAL
Fast-forward one hundred and fifty years and we see telephones, computers, satellites, and the Internet. We can essentially communicate with anyone anywhere. I can call someone in London right now. I could Skype with someone in Bombay on my phone while driving my car.

Tinder introduces something new. What about finding people we don’t know? Backstory: Tinder is sort of a speed-dating app where individuals are presented with a person’s photos and profile, and they decide if they are interested. If it is mutual, both parties are matched and can send short private messages to each other.

Initially this function was limited to people in your immediate area, but Tinder has recently introduced a fee-based model that enables global reach. So for example, a person living in London can now match with people in Bombay, Barbatos, or Blacksburg. You can point to anywhere on a map and it is as if you are standing there talking with the locals.

I saw a fascinating demonstration of this. I often ask students what apps they are using and one showed me how he is using Tinder to have conversations with people in Argentina, South Africa, and China—in big cities and rural towns. I was even more impressed that he had connections with people in remote locations like Reunion and New Caledonia. Anywhere (except North Korea) that you point to on a map there are people looking for conversations.

I asked him about language barriers and he said he uses a translation app. I could see his discussions with people in Brazil and Russia about politics, religion, and science— entirely in their native language using Google Translate.

He let me observe him using the software a few times. He “liked” someone and was instantly liked back and I watched him initiate a conversation. People are curious about other people and this type of utility opens doors all around the world.

POTENTIAL PARTNERS
So while I was thinking about the infrastructure of Tinder and reflecting on the telegraph, another map appeared on my screen: SciVal. This is an Elsevier product that “measures the quality and impact” of an institute’s research output.

It offers many different types of reports but it was the map feature that caught my eye. At a glance I could see all the universities that my faculty are working with and the type of research they are doing. Additionally, I could see potential collaborators -- academic, corporate, government, and medical organizations. Even further, I could identify individuals at specific universities working in similar disciplines.

It might seem strange to juxtaposition SciVal with Tinder but their aims are similar: connecting people who might be interested in each other.

Applying the Tinder user experience to other needs could result in a powerful toolkit. For example, I would love to be able to look across the globe for faculty experimenting with critical pedagogy and open education. I want to talk with educators in South Korea about their classrooms. I want to talk with Russian graduate students about the rising Cold War 2. I am curious about engineering education in Istanbal. I would like to learn about libraries in Cardiff.

Beyond finding conversational partners for these intellectual aims, I can also imagine a system where I might dump my existing social network into a map interface. Take my email contacts, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, Linked In Connections, and everything else -- and plot them. I want to see all the towns and cities where I know people. This could spark new conversations with old friends or with former colleagues who have moved on elsewhere.

It has become increasingly easier (technically) to communicate with others. I think the next step forward will focus on identifying and connecting with people who with shared interests or projects, and who can augment our worldview. Tinder offers us a glimpse at this potential. It is a system of serendipity. A fuel for curiosity. A passport inviting us to explore new questions. It could enable us to find people who might surprise, challenge, and support us in ways that we can’t even imagine yet. I think we’re on the verge of global social apps and that’s an exciting future.