Love In The Time Of Apps Read Free

encompassed accomplishments, wealth, position, power, and general reputation. Standing also included certain essential individual characteristics such as morality, empathy, compassion, spirituality, and kindness.
    [L] Likeability. Some people had a high standing in the community, but were not particularly liked.
    [P] Personality. This category embraced a person’s interests, optimism, and ability to communicate.
    [A] Appearance, factoring in age. Thus, a 60-year old could receive a 28 if he or she looked great for a person of that age.
    [H] Sense of Humor. While Sense of Humor could have fallen into the Personality category, the team used to construct the survey believed that Sense of Humor was so important that it required its own category.
    The numbers in each category would be tallied and divided by five with the final number being the individual’s Pragat Personal Rating or “PPR.”
    In addition to the data mined from the internet, Pragat planned to establish a website that housed questionnaires. These were also modeled after Zagat’s restaurant questionnaires, but utilized the various PPR categories. Anyone who wished to complete a questionnaire was asked to identify the individual who they were reviewing by name and address and other identification criteria and to rate the individual using a zero to 30 rating scale. Respondents were also encouraged to include pithy comments like those found in Zagat’s restaurant guides.
    When rumors about Pragat Corporation’s online rating system first circulated over the Internet, members of the press, media, every resident of the blogosphere, as well as most working comedians, took the company to task. Negative tweets outnumbered positive tweets by 1000 to one. Adjectives such as “ludicrous,” “ridiculous,” and “obnoxious” were probably the most commonly used words in editorial comments, followed closely by “ominous,” mostly from those fearful that the assignment of numbers to people would be a precursor to some form of a Brave New World reality or worse. For one group, those with very low ratings, these fears were not too far off the mark.
    Alex Pragat and his team, however, were undeterred by the system’s critics. They fully believed in the new survey, its legitimacy as wellas the accuracy and reliability of the ratings Pragat would offer. Above all, they expected that the website housing its personal rating survey, www.ppr.com , would have so many visitors that it would be monetized in a way that would make it extremely profitable. Judging from the number of travelers to the site the first day of its launch and thereafter, those expectations were quite realistic.
    In its final iteration the look and feel of the ratings as they appeared on the website paralleled those of Zagat, as illustrated by what turned out to be the most notable of Pragat’s ratings.
    Philip Goodwin, Age: 54
    Married to Sheila Goodwin
    No Children
    Grace Harbor, New York
    CEO: Threads, Inc. New York City
    PPR: 28.
    S
L
P
A
H
28
28
28
27
29
    ----
    S –
Standing in the Community
    L –
Likeability
    P –
Personality
    A –
Appearance
    S –
Sense of Humor
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    PRAGAT PERSONAL RATING (PPR) = 28
    A gem of a guy. A bon vivant with class. The most honest person we know. A man of vision. What sets Philip off from his peers is his keen sense of humor and rapier wit. President of the Harborside Country Club for eight consecutive years, Philip leads by example and always seeks consensus. Well read, a movie buff and golf enthusiast, Philip is the kind of man people genuinely like and admire.
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    Given the initial hostility of the media and the skepticism of the public, Pragat realized that unless he turned public opinion around, his venture would be a commercial failure. For almost a year prior to its launch, Pragat Corporation pitched the reliability, accuracy, and science underlying the ratings. Scientists, sociologists, survey experts, former governmental officials and, most importantly,