Anyone remember this scene in Minority Report? The year in the film was 2037. We may be closer than most people realize to this sort of advertising. There’s a nice article in the Sunday Times business section on facial recognition software. It always pays to read the business section. It’s often where the news that effects daily life resides. The article talks about “smart signs” — billboards that can tell who is approaching them. At this point it’s a little rough, meaning that a smart sign could know you are male, younger than 25, etc., and, after making this determination, it would serve you up an ad for say Axe deodorant as opposed to Tampax. Between this and the geolocation devices most of us carry around in our pockets, we are very close to be able to be pinpointed at all times. As Erik Davis said in the recent issue of Plazm, “resistance has become invisible” — turning off your cell phone for extended periods of time, not using the internet where we leave “data shadows” is the latest form of resistance.
Here’s a profile on Immersive Labs’ — one of the many companies who are pioneering the technology.
On a related topic, here’s another interesting article that ran in the Times a week or so ago. It is written by Hasan Elahi, an artist that, after being mistakenly identified by the FBI as a terrorist, decided to document every facet of his life. He currently has provided over 46,000 images to the FBI — and anyone else who cares to look. He has essentially given so much personal data that he has achieved some level of anonymity.
He just did a TED talk a few weeks ago as well.
Favorite quote – “I am glad that we have patrons of the arts in these fields”
Really very interesting, thank you so much for sharing!