Here I am spelling out the basic concept of RegenCHOICE, to help the reader's orientation. When you are ready for more detail, go to the index.

RegenCHOICE is a uniquely different approach to enabling people to find other people, particularly those they don't know yet, or don't know well. It doesn't assume that people know either exactly what they want, or what is available. The wants and needs of both sides are taken into account simultaneously, so the only people that you ever find will be those who are at the same time looking for someone like you.

RegenCHOICE promises a much greater efficiency than other approaches. It will guide people to answer just those questions that are important to the others they are looking for. People will never be asked anything that doesn't matter, so they get the best results for the least amount of effort. This is the golden mean between too few and too many questions.

The vision includes a radical improvement in both online dating and online recruitment. Dating will provide the people; recruitment will bring in the money. But even more importantly, it will open up the possibility of connection between people for other motivations: people to share living spaces; people to do small jobs for you; people to start a new venture, or village with.

Some people think this can be done cleverly with AI tools. Having over 35 years worth¹⁾ of knowledge of the principles of AI, I have a carefully nuanced view on this. RegenCHOICE will use AI in ancillary ways. But the main job of finding suitable people is not something that can be treated as a purely technical matter. It is also a matter of learning, reflection, revision. Good luck to those who want to apply AI tools here – you will have lots of competition in a crowded field!

The idea came to me originally in late 1992, and soon afterwards I called it “CHOICE”: an acronym for “Common Human Online Information Correspondence Enquiry”.

• It is relevant to all common humans, not only special ones.
• It is done interactively online – that is a given now, but back then it seemed quite unusual.
• The information managed by the system is firstly about the attributes of humans (individually or in organisations), then about their desires, wants, needs; and, just as vital, about the relational opportunity they both have in mind.
• The system looks for correspondence, or “fit”, both ways, between the information provided and asked for of each party.
• Enquiries are managed so that all parties are guided to find the closest that is available to what they want.

However, it has been beyond my capabilities to build such a system. I have thought it through at many levels, but need some people to share the idea with, perhaps to mix with their own.

If you know of anyone who could be interested, please let me and them know.

• RegenCHOICE USPs (“unique selling points“) focuses on on spelling out what is unique about this approach.
• How it works is a short explanation from another perspective, more of the technology.