Inter-People Communication

I watched season 1 of The Big Bang Theory this weekend.  Every episode.  That should prove sufficient nerdiness warning for this post!

In computer science there's this idea of inter-process communication, and a common method of accomplishing this is this other idea of message passing.  Two different models of message passing are synchronous and asynchronous systems.

Synchronous systems require an acknowledgment before sending out the next message.  Asynchronous systems don't care, just send the message!

I think dating usually works synchronously, although there are times when communication is asynchronous.  I don't know about you, but those asynchronous points in communication cause a great deal of anxiety for me, mostly because I'm not sure if the message was received or not.  I think guys have a similar problem; I read in a book somewhere that guys like getting an acknowledgment after a date that it went well.  Not necessarily to set up the next date, but just to know that the lady had a good time.  After experimenting with this a little bit, I've noticed that a quick text the day after a date will improve the odds that the guy will set up the next date quickly, by a factor of several days.

Quite obviously there is no way I'll be able to get social norms in dating to adhere to any kind of communication protocol (although I theorize that if we did have some sort of protocol we'd have a lot fewer misunderstandings).  And I think that neither synchronous nor asynchronous message passing will provide an ideal solution that will enhance early-dating-communication while maintaining current social norms.  But I do think some of the principles can apply successfully.

Say Bob wants to take Alice on a date, yet will be out of town next week.  He doesn't want his window of being able to contact Alice to close, so he has to contact her before he leaves town.  Given current social convention, Alice is free to respond any time while Bob is out of town, although if she's very interested in Bob, sooner is better than later.

But now Alice has to wait until Bob gets back!  And even if Bob has access to his communications devices (because let's face it, who doesn't have their cell phone with them most of the time?), social convention dictates that Bob wait until he returns before he contacts Alice with the details of their date.  This waiting causes a lot of anxiety for Alice, even though she already knows that Bob will probably contact her.  If Bob sent a quick acknowledgment with a message that he'll contact her when he's back in town, Alice would have no need to be concerned.  Or maybe Alice is just an neurotic.

Or maybe Alice would be so busy with her own life that she'd forget about Bob being out of town, and when Bob returned and contacted Alice, his window of opportunity on dating Alice would have closed (happened to me!).

Here's another example.  Say Bob and Alice go out on their date.  They have a good time, but Alice waits patiently for Bob to contact her for the second date.  According to social convention, Bob must wait several days before contacting Alice again, but during that time doesn't really know if Alice had a good time or not.  Bob stresses for several days waiting for the requisite time to pass.  If Alice sent a message to Bob the next day saying she had a nice time, then Bob's anxiety is relieved.  Or maybe Bob is a neurotic. (This maps to the anecdote I mentioned earlier)

At any rate, dating is very stressful for everyone involved.  If we were all better communicators (or selective mind readers), things might go much more smoothly.