We live in a world where the keyboard, mouse and button rule supreme, very little comes close to the rates of human interaction these devices get, other than potentially keys, door handles, steering wheels, knobs and taps. Have a think about what other things your hands touch in a day to get another inanimate object to do something. Clearly as humans, we use our other senses and body language for communication, but we’re not quite there with those sensory inputs for inanimate objects like computers are we?

or are we?

News is just out that NEC has built digital billboards in Japan that use face recognition to work out your gender and age (to within 10 years) and then serve you a more targeted ad. Mobile and social media apps increasingly want to pin you to a place and a time to give more relevance. Sound activated devices (think lighting in a cheesy 80s bachelor pad) have been around for ages. Motion sensors can be found in burglar alarms the world over. Come to think of it, it’s everywhere, it’s just not in many devices yet.

Like the billboard, all these devices try and give you a more personalised experience.

I personally love the idea of ads so targeted that you want to see them. In fact if your e-clone could help arrange this, I wouldn’t mind at all, if someone wants to tell me whilst I’m out of the house about a cheap holiday deal last minute that I could surprise my family with, or that a particular place I like is doing a special deal on my favourite sandwich, it would be great!

But how far would people go? would you like it if every device you owned could use any number of input devices to make a more compelling and useful experience for you? Would you like it if your web browser sniffed not only your flash player version, but your breath, make of aftershave/perfume, looked at the clothes you were wearing in terms of styling, colour and age, and then served you some ads that would make you look, smell and feel great?

I bet someone out there is making a computer that can detect these things, and if they’re not, surely it’s a whole new industry of device creation, gadgets, data collection, marketing data and advertising to be taken advantage of!