Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Monday, December 29, 2008

Techno Wonders

Imagine tricking your latest-model must-have camera cellphone with a 'reader software' program designed to enable instant linkage to bar codes that produce instantly identifiable messages like details about the latest entertainment production, the list of ingredients in various edible products, the country of origin and materials employed in the production of various consumer goods, and you're in the bright new world of emerging consumer-information technology.

QR codes, as in "quick response", invented in the mid-1990s by a Japanese corporation, Denso-Wave, to track vehicle manufacturing parts, is a concept that has been broadened and expanded to bring to the digital world of human-technological interaction, an entirely new adaptation. Product-embossed QR codes capable of instantly, when scanned by a camera-telephone, producing advertisements, restaurant menus, shopping information and public transit timetables.

These special bar codes, appearing increasingly in consumer products in Japan have proven to be both useful and popular. Imagine scanning a pack of tomatoes with a mobile telephone, and immediately data appears for the interested shopper, detailing where the fruit was grown, the size of the farm and additional details: organic or conventionally grown, type of tomato, perhaps even recipes best suited to that particular type. Amazing, isn't it?

The small square pattern - in reality an edible bar code of chocolate - appears on an ever-growing list of Japanese products. The ChocoQR represents a major code marketing campaign. Britain is beginning to see these codes emerge on countless products, whereby consumers can be offered instant access to games, videos, Web sites and prizes, after the code has been swiped with a cellphone.

Innovative, you bet. All those young techno-whiz-kids out there will love it. The old fogies will grumble about new-fangled and complex technologies that leave them out in the cold, but they'll adapt. Life becoming more interesting - and complicated - day by fascinating day.

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