Phones with eyes

The Economist Technology Quarterly includes a thoughtful article on the developments around camera phones (Monitor Phones with eyes The Economist Technology Quarterly, Mar 10th 2005 [subscription required]).

It notes that "[c]amera-phones are not just for taking pictures. They can be used for other things too, from shopping to treasure hunts" and discusses phones being used as business-card scanners, for taking snapshots of train timetables, price checking in a bookstore, and the use of two-dimensional bar-codes (developed by Semacode) for getting up-to-the-minute bus information and treasure hunts. The uses described, it observes, "might not be what the mobile operators had in mind when they launched their picture-messaging services, but it does at least generate traffic and revenue for them".

It concludes with a quote from your correspondent. "Nico MacDonald, a design and technology strategist with Spy, a consultancy based in London, notes that technologies often thrive when people start using them for purposes beyond those for which they were originally intended."