It was a crisp fall evening, and I was sitting at a table outside Cafe Borrone near my house in the heart of Silicon Valley, awaiting the arrival of my first date in over twenty years. A lot had happened in that time. For example, within a twenty-five mile radius of the cafe, engineers had transformed our lives dramatically by developing the internet. At a more personal level, I had become an economist and was now a professor teaching and researching my field.
As I waited, I realized how the rise of the internet had led me to my seat at the cafe. The internet not only created Facebook, eBay, and Amazon—it has also transformed the dating scene. In 1990, “dating services” existed, but they were generally looked down on. Many, probably ...
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