Everybody knows technology changes fast. I feel like I’m somebody who generally keeps a pretty good handle on it, but sometimes you just can’t see it all coming. The last five or ten years, we’ve seen things like RFID become hip as chips have become smaller and cheaper. So much so that you can implant one in your pet in case they get lost. Great technology for pets, but not some much for kids.
With the explosive growth of iPhones (and other smartphones with cameras), add “an app for that” and you’ve got millions of mobile scanners running around. So that is why you might or might not have recently noticed strange looking square barcodes on various advertisements among other places. Take that one step further and AT&T Wireless has given you the chance to create your own barcode with Create-a-Code , as I have done:
Scan this barcode.
You’ll have the get the AT&T Code Scanner App if you want to see where this one goes, but you can create a barcode that links to a website or that contains contact information. Take that the next step and you’ve got kids running around with tattoos (or for the squeamish perhaps ID cards) that link to parent’s contact information. Hey, I guess it’s better than implanting a chip in their leg, right?