As technology moves forward so quickly, there are certainly those among us who give up on staying current.  For the most part, technology dropouts (or perhaps Luddites) are able to function quite well in society.  History will record that Bill Clinton sent exactly one e-mail while in office as President.

However, in some parts of the world, it is getting harder and harder to function on a day-to-day basis without utilizing fairly modern technology.  In Helsinki, public transport schedules have been electronically tied to tracking programs so you can immediately find out how much longer you will need to wait for a bus or train.

The way this works is that the bus clocks in via RFID at each stop.  This data is sent to a central server which updates how far ahead of or behind schedule that bus is.  A rider at a bus stop points his or her cell phone camera at the bus stop’s barcode and takes a picture.  This picture is recognized as a unique identity number by the cell phone which then sends a text message of that number to the server.  The server responds to the text message by sending a reply to the rider’s phone with the estimated time of arrival for the next bus.

While paper schedules are still posted for the less technologically-enabled, the city is considering phasing paper schedules out in favor of this dynamic system.  This will force riders who do not use the technology to impose upon those who do or learn the technology themselves.

Moving a step further, GetWickd is a combination clothing seller and dating service.  Each customer is given a unique customer id and barcode.  Each time the customer buys clothing from the site, he or she inputs this number and the barcode is silkscreened onto the item.  The idea is that a passerby who sees a barcode on, for instance, a T-shirt will use their phone to read the barcode and will automatically load the wearer’s profile in their phone’s browser.  Similar technology exists to send those browsers to your blog or other web page.

The major adoption problem for this technology is the same one that faced the videophone; the user base network externality.  No piece of social technology is useful in a vacuum.  Therefore, people will only adopt this technology once they see that others have already adopted it.  What’s the point in having a barcode shirt if no-one can read it? And what’s the point of having the software to read barcodes on your phone unless enough people have barcode shirts?  The geek effect may provide an initial user base but will it be enough of a beachhead to establish a market desire for the technology?  Companies will need to establish a single common database (there are already competing standards) if they are to gain consumer acceptance.

The idea, however, raises an interesting possibility.  Since it costs money to maintain the database of site-code linkages, could we see a future where clothing expenditures are no longer a one-time event but a subscription-based model?

Tags: barcodes, clothing, dating, rfid