(urth) Short Story 21: Of Relays and Roses

[Jeff Wilson]

On 4/22/2012 2:29 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:
> Of Relays and Roses

> They then call Mr. Edward Teal Smithe, who is VP of his company’s operations and involved with the Mark XX computer which has so successfully been making matches.  He did not originate the idea; that was the province of his colleague Tom Larkin, who is on a six month honeymoon as a result of a successful match.  Larkin posited that with all its data storage capacity, the Mark XX could very easily make reliable matches.  At first they tried to sell the service, but it lost money (Roses was in the red).  As a result, they marketed it as advertising and PR for the other services they offered when they noticed repeat business and customer loyalty as a result of the successful matchmaking program were huge.

Interesting futurism note: Wolfe substantially predicts the ad-driven 
free service model common to many internet-era startups 30-40 years later.

Also, Mark XX is an early instance of Wolfean symbolic puns: X's are 
occasionally used to to mean kisses in valentines and love letters.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >