A few weeks ago, there was augmenting the new with the old – this week; the more likely trend of overlaying the old with the new. The installation of a QR code, made of stone, on a 150 year old building.

As computing moves into the environment, and becomes more invisible, how long will it be before QR codes are considered the equivalent of a modern day 50kg CRT monitor? and at some point will the eventual relic-code itself move from being a perceived “eye-sore”, to adding to the history of the building?

 

3 Responses to The old with the new

  1. Daniel Szuc says:

    Very nice but when people see this, does it mean anything to them. What do they do next? What will it provide? Is it a standard that will scale?

    rgds,
    Dan

  2. Chris says:

    In Australia, I highly doubt that many people know what they are and don’t think they add much value, seeing as though their typical usage is as a visual URL shortener. I also think any curiosity people fee towards them may have been taken out of the equation by the fact they’re mostly only used on advertising in bus stops.

    I’d like to check back on this one though – it’s at the Old Melbourne Gaol, and I can possibly see them used as triggers for some audio descriptions of the areas they’re in, the significance, etc.

    To sum up: it’s probably just another way for people to learn about Ned Kelly.

  3. Chris says:

    I forgot to add that in other countries (mainly Japan, as far as I know), QR codes are -the- standard for linking to mobile content. The public is well trained in their use for everything from purchasing drinks to entering competitions, and all local handsets have built in readers – which I think is one of the main barriers here. You have to manually install a reader on most phones available.

    They are still just a visual version of bit.ly though (in most cases) – the reasons they took off in Japan are probably many and varied, but; they’ve had a sizeable WAP usage for a decade or more, people read a lot of content on their phones there, and typing in a URL on a phone is not funnest experience…

    There’s still room for them, but they need much closer integration with the phones here before they took off.

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