Communications Become Context-Specific Few people realize that we are on the threshold of a truly remarkable period in history. We are witnessing the convergence of several powerful trends that will soon produce a tremendous economic boom.
Whether you’re walking down the aisle of a supermarket, driving across town, or just relaxing at home, the global network increasingly “knows” where you are and possibly, what you’re doing.
Obviously, this could be either a positive or a negative development, depending on how it’s used. Before we delve into the implications, let’s discuss how the five major technological and cultural trends are making this possible:
1. The widespread incorporation of RFID and GPS chips into consumer electronics devices. 2. The growing acceptance of personal tracking by the average American. 3. The refinement of context-sensitive communications. 4. The emergence of wearable technology. 5. The explosion in context-sensitive marketing.
Let’s examine each of these developments separately.
In the February 2004 issue of Trends, we presented an in-depth discussion of RFID technology. RFID is well-suited to identifying items traveling predictable routes, where stationary signal detectors can scan the RFID tags at close distance.
For example, we discussed Wal-Mart’s directive to its suppliers to ship all merchandise on pallets outfitted with RFID tags, beginning in 2005. By scanning these tags as the pallets move across each store’s receiving dock, Wal-Mart updates its inventory systems in real time.
The beef industry is also investigating RFID tags. An RFID chip attached to a steer will enable continuous cattle tracing from the breeding farm to the slaughterhouse ? important information given recent outbreaks of mad cow disease in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
Large organizations such as the U.S. Social Security Administration are now attaching RFID tags to computer equipment, office furniture, and art to improve asset tracking and reduce pilferage. Brink’s even developed an innovative RFID-enabled money box that self-destructs when stolen.
For at least two decades, security systems have identified individuals by using early-generation RFID technology. For example, employees commonly carried RFID security badges permitting access to secure workplace areas. But these tags were costly and relatively bulky.
Today, firms are investigating less dubious RFID tags as a way to track certain subsections of the public. For example, children visiting Dolly’s Splash Country theme park in Tennessee sport waterproof RFID-enabled wristbands. The wristbands eliminate desperate searches by parents for separated children. They also enable value-added services like cashless payments.
Museums in Europe are currently experimenting with RFID-assisted commentaries of their collections. Art patrons are no longer forced to listen to a static taped commentary following a specified route. Instead, the commentary follows each patron’s steps through the museum and can be targeted to each person’s area of interest.
Curators envision individually tailored commentaries ? by language or by age, for example ? that reflect a particular visitor’s interests. Hypothetically, one individual walking through the Louvre’s Asian painting galleries could learn about the influence of Japanese watercolorists on 19th century French Impressionists, while another listened to a detailed historical review of Japanese Arts.
Unfortunately, RFID applications are limited at the moment, because scanners must read tags at a close distance. When a child wanders outside the gates of the park, he can no longer be tracked. When a visitor to the art museum strays too far from the painting, the commentary ceases.
A GPS microchip, however, does not face such physical limitations. Why let your interest in the Expressionist movement stop at the museum entrance? Soon your personal art tour will very likely continue as you stroll through the neighborhoods of Paris. A start-up firm is already offering GPS-guided tours of lower Manhattan. The promise of this technology is already clear.
And the potential goes far beyond entertainment and security. Several lost mountain climbers have been located and rescued, thanks to GPS devices and cell phones. Soon, any caller using the latest cell phone equipped with a GPS chip will be similarly easy to find.
But the applications go far beyond even these. Consider the following: ADS, a start-up firm in Southern Florida, is marketing the $200 Verichip, a GPS chip that can be worn by an individual or even implanted inside their bodies. These chips have already been implanted in household pets. Each chip carries a unique identification number and space for other information ? perhaps the URL of a Web page with biographical or medical information.
The chip is generating considerable interest from many groups. Consider the following four applications already under consideration:
1. Police will quickly locate accident victims, lost Alzheimer’s patients, missing children, or kidnapped adults. 2. Doctors and emergency service technicians will access vital medical information when patients are either unconscious or disoriented, based on the electronic ID. 3. Soldiers and journalists in combat situations will be quickly located when separated from friendly troops. 4. Correctional departments will be able to monitor parolees and the incarcerated more accurately.
ADS is aggressively entering markets in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico?countries that lead the world in kidnappings. Business Week1 reports that ADS has deals in these three Latin American countries to provide Verichips for security and authentication. Initial orders exceeded $300,000, with anticipated first-year revenue approaching $2 million. ADS President Scott Silverman believes that the global market for security chips will be worth $450 million by 2007.
These new technologies can revolutionize a variety of activities in both the private and the public sector. For example, GPS chips embedded in the passports or visas of visiting travelers might permit immigration authorities to confirm a visitor’s departure.
Advertisers might tailor location-specific Web site banners and pop-up windows to college students surfing the net from their GPS-enabled notebook PCs. Think of it as a location-specific cookie on your Web browser. When you’re driving by your preferred supermarket, your refrigerator might call you on your combined cell phone/PDA. Then, it would verbally prompt you to stop in for some low-inventory items and simultaneously download a list of groceries to buy.
New entrants are already creating markets based on these location-specific technologies. Here are just three examples:
? A new taxi service in London will dispatch a cab to the location of a customer’s mobile phone. When the customer pushes a memory button to dial the company’s number, its nearest available cab is sent right to the customer’s location. ? Trepia, a start-up, released the latest version of something it calls “location-based instant messaging.” The service uses a PC’s IP address to identify the person’s location ? as long as they’re connected via technologies such as Wi-Fi. It uploads a list of people on the Trepia network onto the computer’s buddy list, starting with those located nearby, so they can make plans to meet in person. ? Dodgeball.com users rely on their mobile phones to “check in” ? essentially to log their whereabouts via a WAP, SMS, or IVR voice application. Their location is then broadcast to their “dodgeball circles” ? groups of friends whose cell phones are enabled with messaging capabilities. More often than not, using dodgeball circles to “check in” results in nearby friends getting together when they normally would be oblivious to the fact that they were five blocks from one another.
As promising as these technologies are for improving people’s lives, they also raise a number of privacy issues. For example, a GPS chip embedded in your license plate will enable transportation authorities to not only pinpoint your current location, but also to monitor where you’ve driven in the past 24 hours ? possibly even to calculate the speed at which you’re driving!
Similarly, a GPS-enabled PDA will enable your assistant, your colleagues, and others in your company to physically locate you at all times. And if your credit card company attaches a GPS chip to your card, marketing companies might begin to track not only your purchases, but also all the stores you visited ? even those where you didn’t buy anything.
Some individuals are open to restricted forms of personal monitoring ? particularly those that are self-defined. Tests at Trepia and dodgeball.com, for example, reveal beta users not only accepting, but embracing, location-specific tracking.
If this seems far-fetched, recall that some pundits forecasted the failure of electronic shopping not too long ago. They predicted that customers would be reluctant to provide credit card information over the Internet. Yet consumer electronic commerce is an overwhelming success story ? consumers spent over $18.5 billion during the 2003 holiday season alone, according to research by Goldman Sachs and Nielsen/NetRatings.
We can safely assume that many consumers now trust the security of electronic shopping. Similarly, we expect the average consumer will similarly embrace selective personal tracking applications over the next three years. These applications will enable individuals to define their preferred social communities “on the fly” ? using devices to authorize remote, arms-length social interactions with some individuals and permitting closer, in-person interactions with others.
That device may not be something that people carry, but rather something they wear. In our analysis of Trend #1, we discussed Microsoft’s Smart Personal Object Technology, which seeks to revolutionize the wristwatch by sending information over radio frequency to and from the device.
Forbes recently discussed the roll-out of other smart watches that display instant messages, news feeds, and appointments. Motorola’s Integrated Digital Enhanced Subscribers Group is similarly prototyping a new generation watch called “The Wristable.” Moreover, the group is developing an entire line of wearable smart devices called Offspring.
The heart of the line is a wearable PDA that includes the functionality of a media player and a cell phone. It will wirelessly transmit information via Bluetooth software to customized goggles that display the information as images. The goggles, which appear to be a regular pair of sunglasses, actually contain an earphone in one of the eyeglass stems, a voice-activated microphone, and a digital camera. It includes an optional push-to-talk clip-on button to eliminate background noise, and an Intellipen, a device that records everything the user writes. This line of devices is meant to provide the wearer with an unobtrusive “second skin of information.”
If such technology is reminiscent of the recent film Minority Report, where Tom Cruise’s character encounters talking billboards and virtual store greeters that know him by name, it shouldn’t be surprising. These scenarios were forecasted by acclaimed futurist Peter Schwarz, founder of the firm Global Business Networks. When wearable devices such as Motorola’s prototype come to market, users will announce their presence electronically. As a result, advertisers will likely tailor their messages to specific individuals. The foundation for such smart advertising has already been laid in Europe where wireless applications are far more sophisticated than those in the U.S.4
Consider these examples:
London-based Shazam has developed song recognition technology that lets cellular phone users point their phone to a music source when they hear a song they like, in order to receive a text message with the name of the artist and the track.
Cambridge-based Hypertag is rolling out battery-powered tags with built-in infrared signals that allow visitors and passers-by to simply point and click their cellular phones at a movie billboard or display to retrieve related information and services from the Internet.
The Coca-Cola billboard in London’s Picadilly Circus, touted as the largest billboard in the world, has built-in cameras, heat sensors, and a weather station to allow it to interact with its environment, as well as with Londoners passing by.5 The display changes depending upon the weather, and even recognizes when people wave at it. The billboard will soon respond to text messages from cellular devices.
Based on the preceding discussion, we forecast the following developments in context-specific communications by the end of the decade:“Finder chips,” single chips with GPS functionality, will be incorporated into clothing, purses, and wallets. These chips will continually track the location of all family members. “Virtual trackers” on PDAs and PCs will enable parents to instantly locate their children ? and each other ? pinpointing every individual down to the closest street address and publicly listed phone number.
Credit card companies will market a new form of context-sensitive predictive print advertising modeled after TiVo. Card companies will combine the demographics of individual card members with their recent transaction histories and current locations to print text messages and sale offers from nearby merchants on sales receipts. These messages will be tailored to an individual consumer’s tastes, interests, and needs.Satellite radio, not wanting to miss this revenue-generating goldmine, will enable advertisers to develop context-sensitive commercials. Satellite radios will play those ads in cars driving by merchants who participate in this premium service.Due to heightened security concerns, it’s likely that a Federal law will mandate that GPS-chips be embedded in all driver’s licenses, Social Security cards and passports in the U.S. as a way to thwart terrorism.
References1. Business Week, March 21, 2002, "Roll Up Your Sleeve ? for a Chip Implant," by Jane Black. ⓒ Copyright 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved.2. Internet Telephony Online, November 2003, "Beam Me Up!" by Jim Machi. ⓒ Copyright 2003 by Technology Marketing Corp. All rights reserved.3. Forbes, February 2, 2004, "New Twist for the Wrist," by Stephen Manes. ⓒ Copyright 2004 by Forbes Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.4. Springwise Newsletter Online, December 2003, "Whispering Billboards, Talkative Cab Drivers." ⓒ Copyright 2003 by Springwise. All rights reserved.5. ibid.
