by johnt
7. September 2010 10:31
‘Royal Mail launches first augmented reality stamp’ what on earth does this mean, is this a ‘Generation Y's’ plot to further confuse their elders? Is reality not real enough for these people that they have to augment it? Or is this a technology desperately looking for a problem to solve?
If this had been announced in April I would have had a giggle and passed on to the next story about the holiday island of San Serif or Burger King's left handed ‘Whopper’. But it arrives in September so they must be serious. I feel a little like Sir Walter Raleigh's boss, in Bob Newhart’s comedy routine, on hearing about the discovery of tobacco ("...you stick it between your lips...you set fire to it?").
Maybe it will be a world beater and every stamp will have ‘augmented reality’, or will it suffer the fate of tobacco and eventually be seen as antisocial, people will gather around in shelters outside scanning their stamps and going to a different reality.
A stamp that can identify if any data cleansing had been carried out, now that would be good idea. If the data is not cleansed the stamp will not stick to the envelope!