Humans Searching for
Love

How Humans Search in Hybrid Environments

Project 2 | Members: Maria Tello-Ramos, Wiebke Hutiri

Description

The present is digital, quantitative, data driven. What I know about the future: it will become more digital, more quantitative and more data driven, at a faster and faster rate. Yet, it’s not all about data and measurement. We still seek relationships, we still need to eat, we still search for work. However, more and more of these physical (or embodied) activities are mediated by data, algorithms and feedback loops. We can think of this space where our physical and digital worlds collide as ‘hybrid’ environments.

On the one hand, mediating between human behavior and activities, and technology is not new. Our spatial and urban environments, consciously or unconsciously, have been designed to influence our interactions with each other and the world. However, in hybrid environments, human shaping, or design, are particularly significant, for several reasons: there’s a tendency towards monopolies, the rules of the environment are invisible, and the environments can change rapidly, unexpectedly and in unexpected ways.

How do we understand how humans search, forage and find in these rapidly changing, hybrid environments? Of particular interest for this project is the particular hybrid environment of online dating. However, in future insights that we gleam in this space can be useful for exploring hybrid environments that are all around us and that affect billions of people that are currently not the center of scientific research.

Key articles and suggested readings