Freaked out ...
... by the last sentence in this article. Today is my first wearing my new chukka boots. Wondering now if everybody else that reads this article gets a different last line, courtesy of his scruffily bearded lordship.
Walk into a petrol station in the UK and you might see an Amscreen advertising things to you. But it's not only you who's doing the looking; it is looking at you too. It's nothing personal... The screen uses technology from Quividi to work out your age and gender. It looks at hair length, cheek structure, eye distance and …
"This technology must have been out for ages. How else do you explain my inbox being full of baldness cures, weight loss pills and impotence remedies?"
Well it needs tweaking then. I need neither penis enlargement nor increased bust size, But there's a good chance if I did need one, I wouldn't need the other!
Kill
Kill
Kill
Kill
I'm fucking sick of our 'culture' of treating humans (that's you) as unit of consumption ramming as much shite at them as possible to get them to spend as much as possible buying as much shite as possible.
This will NOT reduce the cost of petrol one micro-penny.
When next you see one of these, let them know you don't want it. If you don't it'll only get worse (QV the fucking animated ads in tube stations).
quote: "surely if i wear a mask while walking into a petrol station i will get arrested?"
Probably, but you shouldn't. Wearing a mask is not a crime, so unless and until you actually start trying to rob the place, you have committed no crime.
See also: motorcycle helmets on people who have just filled up the tank on a *gasp* motorcycle. I mean it's not like I'm required by law to wear a helmet in order to ride on the public roads or anything... *grumble grumble*
I know there's a lot of hate about/against advertising (you'll find me there as well), but this tech, as it is presented now, is actually a good idea and makes clever use of impersonal data to improve the targetting of adverts while using largely commodity hardware to perform the task.
In some ways it's easier to think of it as an automated attendant looking you up and down and either suggesting the "£1 for a bar of chocolate" or the "meal-and-a-paper" deal depending on what you look like. The serious problem comes when systems like these are enhanced and store your picture rather than just analyse and discard it and then start to link this image profile to locations and purchases (e.g. payment methods). After all, you wouldn't want to walk into a different shop/petrol station with your wife and be offered condoms because you regularly buy them from another shop using the same system would you? :)
As I recall they've generally been pretty shit (tatty stereos, killed off Sinclair, 3" drives when the world used 3.5" on their word processor, email phones, etc), so it would not surprise me if this was a crock of crap under the covers.
I wonder what the SMS message format is, be a chuckle if they just contain a URL and the SIM number is visible.