{"product_id":"operation-match-jeff-tarr-and-the-invention-of-computer-dating","title":"Operation Match: Jeff Tarr and the Invention of Computer Dating","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe improbable and untold story of the college student who invented the world’s first computer dating service!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the fall of 1962, Jeff Tarr, a teenager from a small town in Maine, began his freshman year at Harvard University. By the time he graduated, he had developed and launched the first-ever computer dating service, upending courting rituals at colleges across the United States and becoming a minor celebrity in his own right. Tarr’s innovation arrived in a nation whose campuses were still in step with 1950s notions of morality, propriety and tradition—many northeastern college dormitories were still segregated by sex, and bars weren’t a place for singles to meet and mingle. In just a few semesters, Tarr brought computer algorithms to the people, propelling America’s youngest adults headlong into the swinging ’60s. As the sexual revolution and women’s rights movement gained steam, and as civil rights victories mounted and the Vietnam War dragged on, Tarr’s new vision for how young men and women should pair off rode a surging wave of cultural change.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOperation Match\u003c\/em\u003e follows Tarr’s adventure from the dateless Saturday night where a little beer and banter with his roommate sparked an idea, through the process of perfecting a dating questionnaire, to late nights feeding thousands of punch cards into a rented IBM mainframe, to matching tens of thousands of young men and women, for better or for worse. It also traces his transformation from an anonymous, awkward, Kennedy-loving college man to a voice of the New Frontier, appearing on the \u003cem\u003eToday\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eShow\u003c\/em\u003e and the \u003cem\u003eTonight\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eShow\u003c\/em\u003e and, of course, having more dates than he could ever have dreamed of. [publishers’ note]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEdited by Susan Johnson, Ellen Lupton, Jim Larkin.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"2wice Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57358095679828,"sku":"A8B-34808","price":35.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1072\/9609\/6596\/files\/tarr.jpg?v=1790814106","url":"https:\/\/after8books.com\/products\/operation-match-jeff-tarr-and-the-invention-of-computer-dating","provider":"After 8 Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}