Last spring, a start-up company in Germany announced a new app that promises to simplify a growing aspect of urban German life: legalized prostitution.
The app operates on the same principles as those that recommend restaurants or help you find live music: you tell it what you’re in the mood for and it uses your smartphone’s location services to tell you what’s available nearby.
The app was one of the examples cited in the August 9 cover story of The Economist about “how technology is transforming the world’s oldest profession.”
The Economist waxes enthusiastic over the ways that “specialist websites and apps are allowing information to flow between buyer and seller, making it easier to strike mutually satisfactory deals.”
Now, “prostitutes can warn each other about violent clients, and do background and health checks before taking a booking,” and customers can “proceed with confidence.”
Well, if that makes hiring a prostitute a lot like hiring a plumber, that’s exactly how The Economist sees it. Its analysis of what it calls the “wealth of data available online” leads it to conclude that most prostitution is “surprisingly similar to other service industries.” (more...)
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