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In Japan, a Billboard That Watches You
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Dec 16, 2008 02:34 AM
from the don't-look-now dept.
from the don't-look-now dept.
An anonymous reader writes "At a Tokyo railway station above a flat-panel display hawking DVDs and books sits a small camera hooked up to some image processing software. When trials begin in January the camera will scan travelers to see how many of them are taking note of the panel, in part of a technology test being run by NTT Communications. It doesn't seek to identify individuals, but it will attempt to figure out how many of the people standing in front of an advertisement are actually looking at it. A second camera, which wasn't fitted at the station but will be when tests begin next month, will take care of estimating how many people are in front of the ad, whether they are looking at it or not."
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Submission: Japanese billboards are watching you by Anonymous Coward
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In Soviet... Japan... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what?
Re:In Soviet... Japan... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Um ...
Can you image a beaowulf cluster of these ?
Re:In Soviet... Japan... (Score:5, Funny)
Residents of the UK can.
Parent
In Japan, Billboard watches you! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In old Japanese manuals, it certainly is. Although I think in this case it is more a reference to ISR-Jokes.
It's the same in North Korea (Score:5, Funny)
Hence the expression "In Soviet Korea, billboard watches YOU!"
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the dog.
Re: (Score:2)
No, in Korea only old people watch billboards.
Get it right.
Have any of you ever BEEN there? (Score:3, Funny)
I have, many times, and I can honestly say that the only thing I'm looking at are the women. Ninjas sitting on the camera mounting, firing those little star things and nunchuks at me? I wouldn't even notice.
Re:Have any of you ever BEEN there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Flippant though you may be, I can only see two outcomes for this -
1. Advertisers realise exactly how much they have trained people to ignore everything around them, no matter how bright or annoying.
2. Advertisements quickly become even more completely based around naked female flesh, because that's the only way they get any attention at all.
Parent
Re:Have any of you ever BEEN there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent points!
I've been saying this for a long time... we've become so inundated with ads that we just completely ignore them now.
Even on television... many (if not most) people recorded their shows on VCR simply to avoid the commercials... same reason I use Tivo now. Sure, as our busy schedules got even busier, time shifting became more desirable; but even if a show is on while I'm watching TV, I will often pause or start recording it to come back later just to avoid watching the commercials.
I suppose it's like any other good or service... the industry has devalued their product (ads) by over saturating the market.
Parent
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Slippery slope (Score:5, Interesting)
1: Billboards watch people.
2: These billboards are more popular and are put into more common use.
3: Information from a billboard cam is subpoenaed.
4: Some bright young chap in politics notices that (a) There are cameras everywhere that could be used to observe the populace, (b) The information from these cameras isn't in use, and (c) He is up for re-election soon and needs some dirt on his opponent.
5: This politician will make a bill to monitor the billboards. Anyone in opposition will be "soft on crime", "unwilling to monitor dangerous criminals", and "must be hiding something."
6: Sooner or later, Minority Report.
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Re:Slippery slope (Score:4, Insightful)
These who don't know History are sentenced to repeating it.
The credibility is in past scenarios. Copyright. PATRIOT. Communist revolution.
Slippery Slope scenarios tend to be right.
Parent
Re:Slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't that slippery slopes tend to be right it is that you have to plan on the people abusing your system.
Building a device and put a stick of dynamite into it. see what happens, build a web site, even a personal one, and watch how often it gets attacked. If your going to plan for the future you need to think ahead. People abuse the things they are given and don't have responsibility of. So if you give some one unlimited powers with no oversight it will be abused no matter the intentions.
Parent
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They hooked up cameras to force copyright issues?
They used video footage to start the communist revolution?
And while PATRIOT does show that nationalism can be used to put through bills to monitor people, I don't see it as directly relevant to the putting up of a private cameras, I do however think you just prooved GPs point
just a made up chain of events without justification or evidence. hence it's got no credibility.
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3b. Journalists do that a lot
4b. Journalists realize that they have the right to take pictures in public places and that a lot of politicians spend time in public places in various companies
5b. Any politician that is out of the cameras eyes must be hiding something or having a secret meeting, or is afraid of being under public scrutiny
6b. Public cameras get banned or at least finally open a true debate on these things.
I have no problem about putting cameras in
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Every time I've seen your sig "I am the cheese", I almost want to disregard everything else you've said. I understand that child porn is a legislation gateway for something-nefarious(tm), BUT currently viewing child porn IS NOT illegal. In fact, if you ever serve on the jury for a case about child porn PRODUCER, you may have to view some as evidence. What is illegal is 1) paying for it 2) storing or distributing it 3) creating it. In each of these cases, your helping create supply and/or demand, which d
going off topic (Score:3, Funny)
That says something about you...
I understand that child porn is a legislation gateway for something-nefarious(tm), BUT currently viewing child porn IS NOT illegal. In fact, if you ever serve on the jury for a case about child porn PRODUCER, you may have to view some as evidence. What is illegal is 1) paying for it 2) storing or distributing it 3) creating it.
What I mean to say, but don't because it
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What I mean to say, but don't because it makes an awkward sentence is: Paying for, storing, distributing, and filming child porn: Thought crime.
Except that none of those are thoughts, they're physical actions.
In each of these cases, your helping create supply and/or demand I dispute this. Only paying for it creates demand.
Actively seeking it out creates demand, too, because that provides a possible advertising revenue stream. I don't think that's illegal yet, though -- as long as you fail.
which does in fact hurt children. I dispute that too. The only action of those specified that hurts a child is actual abuse, and only that and directly commissioning such should be a crime.
There is the little matter of effectiveness. Making only the abuse and direct commissioning the offences just means that the abuse will take place i
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Some people will say "slippery slope", and others will declare that the phrase is a fallacy. As a shortcut description of the probably course of events, "slippery slope" is just fine. In this case: 1: Billboards watch people. 2: These billboards are more popular and are put into more common use. 3: Information from a billboard cam is subpoenaed. 4: Some bright young chap in politics notices that (a) There are cameras everywhere that could be used to observe the populace, (b) The information from these cameras isn't in use, and (c) He is up for re-election soon and needs some dirt on his opponent. 5: This politician will make a bill to monitor the billboards. Anyone in opposition will be "soft on crime", "unwilling to monitor dangerous criminals", and "must be hiding something." 6: Sooner or later, Minority Report.
You're wrong on #6: it's 1984. Minority Report used people with ESP powers, 1984 used 'TV screens' to monitor the populace.
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1) People call things slippery slope
2) They must be hiding something
3) Minority report
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"It doesn't seek to identify individuals ..."
Yet.
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Sale? They hand the stuff out for free!
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Of course!
Such billboards are in that movie Minority Report!
So if the billboards from that movie come true, everything else from it must also come true! ...regardless of how many laws of physics the movie broke.
Please keep in mind that movies aren't prophecies spat out by burning bushes, they are just entertaining works of fiction.
Slippery slope: targeted and discriminating ads (Score:3)
3: Information from a billboard cam is subpoenaed. ... 5: a bill to monitor the billboards. Anyone in opposition will be "soft on crime", "unwilling to monitor dangerous criminals", and "must be hiding something."
6: Sooner or later, Minority Report.
That's one of many slippery slopes (though, humorously, my slope also ends in Minority Report...)
Another that comes to mind is statistics, which have always been very integral to advertising, but Google is pushing this angle HARD. Basically, the more statistical data you have, the better you can target ads and thus the better you are at pushing products. This means that it is advantageous to the advertiser to discriminate as much as possible.
Example: figure out what brand clothes and items passers-by
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Debugging purposes, They are bound to keep the footage to see if the software is working right.
Slow news day (Score:4, Interesting)
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Indeed, video posters using infa-red to detect when someone's nearby have been around for ages.
The difference here is simply that someone used the "camera" word when describing this system and that's got the tinfoil-hat crowd jumping up and down.
Which station in Tokyo? (Score:4, Interesting)
I RTFA (sorry!) and it doesn't say. As I live there I'd be interested in taking a look.
(I know I won't be tracked or even just mess up their trial statistics, what with me being a foreigner and all that: "We gathered together many faces and came up with an average Japanese face, and by using pattern matching the system recognizes faces from the image.")
Re:Which station in Tokyo? (Score:5, Informative)
I was wondering, too, so I looked up the original report [ntt.co.jp] on NTT's website [ntt.co.jp].
Three cameras are installed on the Keihin Express line at Shinagawa, Yokohama and Haneda Airport stations. There's also one in the Marunouchi Building by Tokyo station and one at their lab in Yokosuka. They'll be testing until the end of March. It seems like the image processing is only being performed at Marunouchi building and Haneda.
I go through Tokyo station on the way home, so I'll post later if I can find the thing.
Parent
Re:Which station in Tokyo? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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There's one of those units at Keikyu Shinagawa at the end of platform 3 just before the stairs going down. I think that's the only one at Shinagawa.
I know I've glanced at it a few times but it strikes me as being a bit too far away from the main stream of people going past to convey much useful information.
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Oooh, it's my lucky day! I change at Keikyu Shinagawa. I'll go and wave it it when I go past in a bit.
Thanks for the info!
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You should get a bunch of national friends together, then, and work to mess it up. Have them walk by constantly, staring at the board. Have them skew the numbers so harshly in the positive direction that the ad companies go bankrupt whilst clamoring to put up ads in the "valuable space".
Crap like this just reminds me of that fallacy-based advert: "You just proved bench advertisement works". No, you just proved that anyone who reads a bench ad reads a bench ad. I've never bought bench advertisements, so
Seems extreme to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, a bit sneaky, but fascinating that they want a headcount of who walks by these marketing ads. I wonder if they realize how numb the public is to this by now? I don't know if there have been studies, but it seems to me, the older you get, the less you want, I could be wrong, I am just speaking from personal experience.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"but it seems to me, the older you get, the less you want, I could be wrong, I am just speaking from personal experience."
OT - Ditto. OTOH we old farts have had
As seen in... (Score:5, Interesting)
This could make for an awesome prank (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not The Point? (Score:2)
It might work in Japan (Score:2)
Don't worry, I have AdBlock! (Score:4, Funny)
*puts sock on head*
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Interesting, but not big news technically speaking (Score:2)
if i ever came to power (Score:2)
i'd ban Billboards. wastes of space. used for covering unmaintained eye sore government property, or just an eye sore in themselves.
i don't think i can remember any advertising campaign, or anything good that was on a bill board.
boo hiss etc.