Gartner analyst Adam Sarner insists he’s serious when he predicts that binding, “virtual marriages” will be a reality by 2015. He says such couples — including those who have never met in person — will enjoy the same property rights and legal responsibilities as the rest of us bound by matrimonial bliss.
“I think the online connection is powerful enough to have these legal marriages online,” Sarner told my Network World colleague Jon Brodkin, who told me he pressed the man vigorously to make sure he was not joking. “The point is the emotional connection they have will be strong enough that they want to make it forever.”
Forever isn’t a concept often associated with the Internet, and I’m having a hard time envisioning virtual marriage as a likely exception. Here are five reasons why:
Virtual couples are going to have to get in line. Homosexuals cannot marry legally in 98% of these United States, so it would seem a stretch to envision avatars tying the knot a mere eight years down the road. Moreover, who’s going to tell Pat Robertson he has yet another challenge to the sanctity of marriage on his hands?
On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. There is the classic New Yorker-cartoon sense to this point, but that’s just the starting point. Who’s to say virtual couples would be any more honest with their intendeds than virtual individuals are with one another today? And — dare I ask — once we start down this slippery slope, what’s to prevent virtual marriages between virtual machines? To say nothing of virtual polygamy between botnets. The mind boggles at the possible permutations.
Let’s think of the children. There won’t be any in a strictly virtual marriage, of course, at least not through conventional means. While this may be fine for some couples, it cannot bode well in the long run for the survival of the species. And I’m going to venture a guess that we may hear from the Rev. Robertson again on this point.
Anytime, anywhere connectivity. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, carrying your spouse around on a smart phone 24/7 is apt to take a toll on the tickers of virtual couples. Oh, sure, we’re already at our dearest’s beck and call today, but the expectation of a real-life encounter at day’s end keeps the beckoning and calling reasonably manageable. Virtual couples would be pitching their BlackBerries before they’ve even written all their thank-you notes.
Finally, misery loves company. Even Gartner’s Sarner acknowledges his prediction cannot come to fruition without rewriting laws — and that can’t happen without a dramatic change in public attitudes. Those who are miserable in their own real-life marriages — and let’s face it, that’s a good half or more of the populace — will be loath to let virtual couples get away with a marital-discord dodge as simple as unplugging the computer. Oh, no, there will be no tossing of virtual china in this country; you want to be married, stand in there and take your medicine.
Go ahead, virtually propose. I may be married in real life, but online the rules are made to — oh, wait, she reads this sometimes. Never mind. The address is buzz@nww.com.
