New Technology to Give Rise to new History

When we refer to history, we often take it as a way of looking back at human society and how we have evolved throughout the years. Most museums often give us a good point of study as they hold key objects that have existed during specific eras and provide us with a glimpse of how things and life was at that time.

Now, imagine if by simply pointing a mobile phone at the barcode on that park bench, you get to catch a detailed list of all the people who have been sitting there and getting to know the things that they did (or perhaps that was not such as good example but anyway). This is the new study being undertaken by the University College London as it launches the Tales of Things program where in various objects from the Oxfam shop are barcode-d and sent to various owners.

Each item owner will be adding new data to the barcode and as such, information about various events, images and other associated data will be attached to the device –like a digital diary or blog.

It is interesting and amusing for most people, but for some specialists, the information that can be gathered and analyzed would be priceless. For many who study behavioral sciences and psychology, these bits of data that can be found are not only telling of the objects themselves, but also of the people that have held them throughout. This will allow us to understand our society better.

Of course, the technology is still new and yet to be fully implemented. Thanks to mobile phone technology however, getting this running is a simple matter of developing the 2D barcode extensively and creating an app that would allow users to instantly scan the barcode to read existing data and possibly, adding new ones.