| Portable Product Truth Device | 2002-12-31 03:39 4 comments |
 by Flemming FunchHere's an idea for a useful gadget or application: You walk around the supermarket and you see a product or a brand you might consider buying. Before you do so, you enter it into your little handheld wireless device. Maybe even by scanning the barcode. It then looks up information about that company and/or product on the net, organized to be from sources you trust in that regard. So, not simply a google search and certainly not the company's own website, but the inside scoop from people with no vested interest in faking it. It gives you a quick snapshot about who owns the company, what they're doing in the world that is good or bad, what the product actually is about, and how other people have liked it. Instant consumer guide investigatory report. The technology is not hard, as it is just about there. It is more in the packaging of it. A wireless PDA or cellphone with a simple web browser. Small barcode readers are available, but it should be integrated. Aside from that, the trick is mainly in putting the knowledgebase together in a way that can be trusted, and providing an interface that makes it a 5 second no-brainer thing to do as routine. Of course you want to know that the company in question employs child slave labor and that they've patented Basmati rice, and that previous customers liked the alternatives better. And you'd want to know what those ingredients really mean, right there on the spot. Such a device could change the world overnight. Even if you aren't an activist eco-freak, it would inevitably change your choices.  ...[later in the day] Ah, Seb Paquet mentions CueJack is doing something very much pointed in that direction. It uses the cheap CueCat barcode reader. I remember getting one for free attached to a copy of Wired, but I think I threw it away because I didn't know what to do with it at the time, as its proposed use (looking up a company's website while you were reading a magazine) sounded stupid. DigitalConvergence that made them has gone under. But there is now apparently an open source database of UPC (the system used in barcodes). CueJack will look up in that, and will do a search engine search on 'boycott', 'corporate abuse', 'profits' and that kind of thing in relation to the product. Cool, those are big steps in the right direction. But, I'd want housewives to be able to have it in their purse, and preferably something more direct than searching in search engines.
And then Paul Hughes has a piece on very similar ideas about "Participatory Capitalism": "I think as wireless, wearable internet access become ubiquitous, we are going to see consumer power re-assert itself in an unprecedented way. Imagine for example, CueCat (a technology previously with little purpose), except this time each barcode is cross-referenced with a moblog not only neatly containing everyones opinion of this product, but also its ethical/corruption index. These types of measurements would be made via decentralized ad-hoc smart mobs in conjunction with individual reputation systems. So, not only will you be able to vote with your pocketbook, but you will be able to make informed, even ethical consumer decsions based on people you trust. I can see this web-of-trust rapidly superceding top-heavy "consumer" capitalism, transforming it into a bottom-up grass-roots participatory capitalism." |