A Fake Prison Break and the Power of Projection

Hot on the heels of my post about the potential uses for ever-smaller and more powerful video projectors comes a great example out of Holland.

It seems a Dutch magazine used video projection to make a point about a the growing issue of prison breaks in Belgium:

The video depicts a group of young guys hastily getting together a projector to fake a prisoner climbing out of his window in a famous prison complex called Bijlmerbajes.            LINK

See the video for yourself below and just try to imagine where this could go next…

Japan’s Smile Scanners a Classic Misuse of Technology

As pointed out on the Freakonomics Blog:

Japan’s Keihin Express Railway Co. has set up “smile scanners” at 15 of its stations, where railway employees have their smiles assessed by software in the hopes of perfecting a customer-friendly look.       LINK

This is such a classic misuse of technology by a corporation.  The goal of the company is to provide more positive and friendly customer service but their technique of using a “smile scanner” is going to have the opposite effect.  Nobody likes to be forced into happiness and the employees will end up resenting the scanners, their bosses for making them use the scanners and the customers for expecting them to smile.

Instead, a smart company would try to figure out how to make their employees genuinely happy so that they smile because they want to smile.  This would create endless positive outcomes for the company, the employees and the customers.

Sometimes technology can look like it provides a quick fix when, in fact, it is just an illusion.