You have to hand it to films such as Minority Report (2002) for getting concepts like this into the consciousness of future target customers. After a 10 year wait, the time has come to pounce on those who watched the film in their formative years and are now ready to invest in the most bleeding edge, technological gimmickry.
This report from TechFeed reports that Telecoms megacorp Verizon is pursuing a number of ways to continue monetising its customers. The first will be through a new service which will offer customers discount coupons for allowing the corporation to interrogate everything they do on their smart phone – from physical location, behaviours, content, apps to demographics. The second idea goes even further, though; Verizon filed a patent last year for “Methods and Systems for Presenting an Advertisement Associated with an Ambient Action of a User” – giving them the means to target advertising based on what you’re doing and what you’re talking about at home whilst you’re sitting in front of your TV.
“The Verizon Detection Zone can detect a couple’s bickering, resulting in an ad for marriage counselling” reports TechFeed. “The system even knows if you’re laughing, crying, singing, playing music or sleeping. But Verizon is not alone in this – Microsoft is also seeking a similar patent for a consumer-detection device for XBox Kinect for purposes of age verification, limiting the number of users and preventing playback …In 2008 Comcast patented a similar technology and Google was also developing consumer detection plans for GoogleTV way back in 2007.” [Bold emphasis added]. You can see here that this technology isn’t just capable of tailoring ads – in Microsoft’s case, they see it being used to enforce licensing. Where do you think that could go? Which other corporations or Government agencies would be interested in using the data and capabilities for this kind of in-home dystopia-wear?
Ladies and gentlemen, the perfect partner-in-crime for our Peeping Smart Meter has materialised right on cue.
Where we go from here is up to you…
More on this at Verizon Follows Google In Turning Phones & TV’s Into Wiretaps – Infowars.
Big Brother 1984 .
…& some!!!