Close your eyes for a minute as you picture the stereotypical computer programmer - one who spends most of his or her time actually programming, a borderline hacker. Okay go ahead.

I'm one of those programmers. So I can fairly perpetuate the stereotype, right? Here's what I see: glasses, messy hair, only as tan as you can get basking in the glow of a monitor covered with empty Mountain Dew cans. After scouring the innards of technical manuals until ungodly hours, being found the next morning passed out over the keyboard. Far be it from me to be prejudicial against my own people, but it's hardly the image that gets the cover of a magazine. From a purely scientific and evolutionary biological standpoint, the future of Homo e-sapiens looks bleak. The ever-growing utility belt burdened with devices and gadgets and gizmos easily identifies the new species of mankind. It was only a matter of time until this crafty new product of human evolution used those same devices and gadgets and gizmos to its propagable advantage.

Enter the wireless dating scene. Granted, the first time I heard anything about people using their wireless phones and devices to browse personals, I laughed. The proverbial nerd image popped into the foreground of my imagination and it was downhill from there. After thinking about it for a while, however, it all started to fall into place. At least it seemed that way. If every person - man, woman and adolescent - had a wireless device on hand, one that could very easily communicate with the wireless device pocketed by someone else, why wouldn't it behoove a developer somewhere (maybe feeling a little lonely on a Saturday night) to whip up a program? It might, in fact, be the savior of the species.

In previous columns, I've thrown myself into the ring as the guinea pig to test any new technology aimed at the Wireless Generation. Given my luck in love and in all relationships, I decided to gracefully bow out of this round. Instead I fearlessly nominated someone else. I changed his name to protect the quasi-innocent. Ironically the same biology classes I slept through in college are the ones that have given me a solid background in experiment design. Louis Pasteur would be proud. Unfortunately, we're not curing any diseases or making milk safe for the world. Instead, my noble contribution to the world of science is to find my friend, Kevin, a date. Nobel committee, be sure to spell my name correctly on the plaque.

Unfortunately, the real dilemma here concerns the pathetic nature of the wireless scene in the U.S. The only location where I could even launch a respectable campaign was Finland. This immediately eliminated most of the location-based features that make date-finding services worthwhile. Instead of just glossing over them, however, in the true scientific spirit, I'm just going to propose a hypothetical. Let it serve as an example of what might happen if Kevin were magically transported to Finland. Kevin, hereunto known as Subject A since it sounds entirely more respectable and science-like, is located in Helsinki for the purposes of this portion of the experiment. Unknowing victim, I mean potential date, is known as Subject B. Both subjects are equipped with SMS and WAP-enabled phones, and have filled out profiles on those phones indicating their interests, hobbies, and major mental dysfunctions.

I have to bring in another player at this stage of the experiment, namely the wireless service or application that hosts the personal ads. Small Planet, a Finnish company, impressed me the most with their recent demonstrations at iWireless World in Beverly Hills early in April, so lucky them, I'm throwing them into the experimental mix.

Both subjects can browse and place personal ads, and even reply to ads posted on Small Planet's M-Friend service. The most interesting aspect of the wireless dating potential comes with location-based 3G services. Imagine having a phone that will alert you when someone who matches your profile comes within 300 yards. I'm convinced that having your phone beep while hearing someone else's across the room beep simultaneously will forever redefine the meaning of the word icebreaker.

Subject A's profile includes a description of his ideal mate that matches what Subject B has filled out in her profile. Three or four loud beeps or maybe even a cutesy ring tone later, they've been introduced - all thanks to the wireless world...at least an ideal wireless world. Until 3G-positioning services become as widely available as their 3G-enabled device counterparts, Subjects A and B will have to make due with browsing on their own accord.

Romance will never be the same. Dime-store novels of tomorrow won't be about horseback rides into the sunset; instead they'll be about upgrading your phone's operating system. It is comforting, though, to know that certain aspects of romance will forever haunt the human race. It's even more comforting to know there's newfound hope for the proliferation of tech-savvy wireless-equipped geeks everywhere.

You'll all be disappointed to hear that Subject A actually found a date using traditional methods during the course of the experiment, thus nullifying him as a guinea pig candidate. After hearing how I tortured him endlessly about putting up a personal ad, none of my other friends had the courage to suffer in the name of progress and science.

Maybe I'll just have to find some new friends a little less familiar with my guerilla-science warfare tactics. Luckily, Small Planet even has an application for that. But until I find more friends, it's back to the eyestrain and the carpal tunnel that I'm learning to ignore, while programming late into the night.