Proxima

Only the shallow know themselves.
-Oscar Wilde-

 

Love your neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.
-Louise Beal-

 

A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are for.
-John A. Shedd-

 

What is it:      A web linked database for matching people’s interests, preferences and personalities. Proxima enables and speeds up the creation of solid relationships for virtually anyone. This is a tool designed to help find others for interaction online as well as in the the “real world”. It works towards increasing understanding of others and enables connecting with those who understand you.

This centralized system will be accessible to anyone to enable the efficient matching of a large pool of participants. Although it may be best for individual applications, it can also increase the efficiency of relationship building in connection with any discussion, chat or community schemes. Proxima can be used as a global standard for alikeness as its underlying mechanics will be universal, but allow for multiple languages and virtually unlimited flexibility to connect people.

 

Why:               There are now many ways to communicate; yet still so few ways to connect. Most people want to meet others of like mind, including those they don’t yet know.  Their aim is not necessarily to find potential "dates", rather people of all ages, as potential friends, business partners and so on for all possible types of relationships.

 

The way individuals find new friends is usually based on a variety of random connections, but generally in familiar settings. What they normally look for, are certain characteristics in others that allow them to effortlessly communicate, collaborate, introduce new concepts and generally grow as a person. The more common characteristics one shares with others, the better their chances are to really understand each other. The specific combination of these traits are unique to each individual, but their many details are common. Unfortunately this process of discovery is normally based on many random events. This makes it exciting, but also long, unpredictable and often fruitless.

 

So far, there was no reliable system that allows people to express their whole personalities in a secure way and find others based on these traits. A system that allows this should be extremely flexible, mirroring anyone’s distinct personality and only the portion that they want to reveal. This relates to the amount as well as diversity of information someone feels comfortable giving away.

 

Such a system should not contain any single piece of personal information that will reveal one’s actual identity. That option should be left to everyone on a per relationship basis. The last thing someone would want is to reveal personal characteristics that unintended parties could exploit. Fortunately it is possible to leave characteristics broad enough that makes actual identification difficult, yet allow one to use these traits to create efficient and meaningful matches. The system should reflect the pattern and safeguards people use in real life meetings with intriguing strangers. Usually personal information is shared gradually with people that give the right signals along the process. The goal is to both enhance on-line relationship building as well as to enable face to face meeting of others we would never have thought possible of finding.

 

Never before was this type of system possible to create because of technical and economical constraints. As little as ten years ago, e-mail or the phone were the few options that allowed individuals with access to communicate in real time at very little cost. However, it assumed that the mail sender/ caller knew of the recipient, at least to the extent of their email address or phone number. Unfortunately there is a huge gap between the amount of people we currently have access to and the potential number of people that would be beneficial to know for some reason.  Even most of the people we know well, probably have traits that may make our existing relationship better if we only knew what these were. Yet because of a number of constraints, mainly time, distance and opportunity these unknown people and positive characteristics have not been identified.

 

With the arrival of the internet, fast servers and advanced databases, a much higher level of personal relationship can be attained at low cost and in little time. Developing significant relationships still requires trust and effort. The part that can become much faster is the filtering of characteristics one holds important and identifying others who posses these. It still may take some discovery of how these personality pieces fit together, but at least we will have the pieces we want. Even people who are similar in many ways may take some warming up, not to mention the occasional fatal flaw that can grind things to a halt, as no system is foolproof. At the same time the existence of pitfalls should not lessen the awesome possibilities that come from enabling people to find each other like never before. The challenge is to build technology that matches the full variety of human interactions. So far, social research and information technology have not been mixed well, to reach the full potential of combining these fields.

 

In the last several years a number of web sites were developed that tried to match up people for mostly romantic

interests.  Many of these use a trivial set of criteria that is used to identify matching people. These include anything from horoscopes to hair style, while leaving out most personality traits of real value. Chances are very slim that significant compatibility will be found based on such trivial characteristics. The other flaw of these dating sites is that they focus too much on a single aspect of one’s personality (romantic interest). Only focusing on one side of a person’s life leaves out about 90% of anyone’s interests. In a perfect system all sides of people would be allowed to be discovered in connection with others.

 

As in real life one should have a chance to gradually reveal parts of their interests and personalities to others when and to what extent they choose to. Everyone has a base set of characteristics they allow others access to. The more personal these become, the more selective they are about disclosing them. This system should closely replicate these usual precautions people take when interacting with friends or strangers. What one would not do in real life, one should not have to do over the internet either. This rule applies to just about everything to allow trust to develop in online interactions.

Proxima should imitate real life in how relationships are developed, but with lightning speed, giving access to people that otherwise would be impossible.

 

There are some websites that create accurate personal profiles for people, but make little attempt to enable connections between them. These sites give a description of the individual but stop short of allowing these people to relate to each other. The collection of user data is usually only for the benefit of the website for further marketing and internal statistics.  One of these, the MBTI is one of the most successful measures of personality and compatibility. Unfortunately it’s under utilized in relation to its potential. It is seldom used or even known by the general public, especially when compared to the popularity of horoscopes and similar methods that have virtually no real value. This situation needs to be reversed, while keeping in mind that the average person does not necessarily care about detailed academic theories. A large segment of population would show no interest in the science of personality theories, yet would appreciate the benefits of a sound personality matching system.

 

The successful use of a system does not necessitate the mastery of its underlying mechanics, in fact expertise only limits the number of users. In a system that relies on a large pool of members, the apparent complexity will only scare off people who could otherwise gain from its use. For those with an inherent interest in the system’s structure, the ease of use will help to gain familiarity. A basic skill set is a precursor to the mastery of any complex system. The simplicity of initial use is essential to the success of this model. (The apparent popularity of AOL points out that simplicity on the surface is an integral factor of success in systems designed for wide use.) Many people couldn't care less about the technology that this type of a system is built on. What they respond to is the empowerment message - the notion that tools like Kazaa and ICQ eliminate the boundaries of time and place. These tools create direct, dynamic connections between people. A searchable web enabled database, based on personalities and preferences, could have profound social and economic benefits for its users. 

 

Never before was it possible for so many people to interface for minimal cost, in possibly very complex and creative ways. So far this complexity has not been utilized successfully. Most of the time there is only a seemingly comprehensive system that in reality is a sloppy construction, giving random results. Otherwise we are usually tolerant of relatively static or meaningless arrangements of information - like alphabetic and single-topic filing of people. Single-topic sorting so oversimplifies the essence and contexts of people as to often make it useless. These are traditional solutions to the problems of classification, and are relics of the time when information was only allowed to exist in more static forms. Until recently, dynamic access was slow and diffcult, and collections of information were not available in flexible formats. The traditional model of information can now be changed dramatically even as it relates to such complex things as people.

 

 

 

How (Theory):               

 

Once you can understand something in a way that you can model it in a computer, you have cracked its code. People and personalities are not much different in the sense that it is possible to replicate a way someone makes friends or makes decisions based on preferences. The key is to break down into the smallest possible detail, what makes people unique. By selecting, combining and comparing the sums of these elements, it’s possible to accurately predict the compatibility of groups and individuals.

 

Even personal web pages or blogs offer one-way communications only. As web sites don’t (yet) talk to each other, the main benefit of a personal site is to act as a billboard type of information source. However, a personal web page doesn’t actively seek out other similar resources that make the site and its owner more productive or better connected. Proxima offers an accurate standard in the sense that it provides individuals apple to apple comparisons of personality features. Yet it remains flexible as these comparisons can be done in high complexity and detail.

 

As long as you can describe yourself, you should be able to find others who have similar characteristics. A default option should automatically know what are the closest personalities compared to yours based on research and personal experience. This default option should be available based on own input of traits, weights and assumed needs. If other constraints are chosen the default option is modified to any other. For example, it is usually assumed that people seek to establish relationships with others of similar age, the default will be set to favor others with similar ages. As this may not always be true, so the option should always be there to adjust the constraints and let older people seek younger ones and so on.

 

People are far more complex than one or two assumed subject areas allowed for in most match programs. There should be a way to look for people based on as little (broad) or as much information (specific) that someone wants to use. Each chosen trait should also be linked to its own group and it should allow for picking a number of these traits for a more complex query.  Allowing complete flexibility is also crucial along with the possibly complex search patterns. This system will be a massive database accessible from the web that uses efficient algorithms to match different (groups or individuals) people in almost any combination. However finding the exact match of yourself will not be the most desirable scenario since that could be a bit like looking in a mirror. Someone who agrees with you on everything will not add much new to your thinking, although validation is something positive as well. A better scenario may be meeting others that are in agreement about core values and key issues, yet are sufficiently different to allow personal growth on both sides. It may for example be interesting to talk to people with similar interests in different stages of life. Proxima will use and exploit the best features of the internet, namely its immediacy, anonymity, accessibility, and flexibility. It is mainly designed to allow people to find each other based on a wide variety of individual preferences. It may even provide an enhancement to normal chat rooms where people are grouped together based on supposedly similar subjects such as being college students.