Smart Badges For Better Meetings

Roland Piquepaille writes "In an article appearing in the November 15th issue of New Scientist, we're told that the 500 attendants of the last Pop!Tech conference were carrying intelligent badges to put around their necks. EurekAlert! has released a version of this article, "Hello, will you be my friend?" These nTAGs, distributed by the nTAG Interactive company, contained personal details about their wearers. And as the nTags can communicate with each other via infrared links, they are able to send alerts when they see a good match between two owners. This doesn't come up cheap: expect $40 to $100 per badge per day, depending on the event. More details and references are contained in this overview which also includes pictures."

Comments

and down the spiral we go

[professorhojo]

holy shit.

we already have no idea how to talk to people who have different ideas to us. hell -- we're so scared of them we'd rather bomb them than talk to them.

now comes a device which can pretty much guarantee we can now go our entire lives never having to talk to another person with a different to us.

"you mean i can set this thing so that i only ever meet people who believe in the creation theory??? yeee haaar!!"

this is the reason we're in the shit that we're in people. don't you think it's time to use technology to help us start including... not excluding?

prof. h.

Re:No Bluetooth?

[dollar70]

This is just a guess, but infrared is a line-of-site technology. I guess the creators had a last-minute revelation of what a horrid idea this could turn out to be if someone were to come up with a "collector" type technology that would sweep a crowd to gain intimate details about everyone at the event with no intention of ever personally talking to any of them.

Again... It's just a guess. I think the whole idea is just dreadful to begin with, but whatever floats your boat. (I certainly wouldn't pay for it.)