Biometrics and Retail Technology

[Trip Krant]

Biometrics Take on a New Style, by Eric Sylvers. The New York Times, 23 February 2011.

Once shoppers can be tracked, the next step could be advertisements selected to match biometric triggers: A customer walks into a shop and a piped-in voice asks if the jacket she bought last time has been satisfactory and would she like to see something similar from a new line. (Tom Cruise’s character received the same treatment in the 2002 movie “Minority Report.”)

 

 

Biometrics are automated ways to identify humans by behavioral and physical traits.  They are at the same time very cool, and yet very disturbing.  This is a short article on IBM’s efforts to adapt biometric
technology to retail marketing.

 

It is interesting that they are testing this with the fashion industry.  Since 9/11 the military and intelligence world have taken to biometrics, and refined a lot of this technology.  Cyberpunk sci-fi writer William Gibson has written about how both the military and art/fashion world are often the first to embrace new technologies, and how both worlds are almost on the same continuum.

 

Fascinating Stuff.