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Don’t be a comeback.
By Lora Kelley
Roy Healy’s first tattoo wasn’t the kind other people regret, such as a long-standing ex’s call or a date in a language you can’t read. However, I was nervous about it. He had asked the artist to write a QR code inside his wrist, directing him to an online page he owned, and was not convinced that it was digitized.
During a two-hour consultation in September 2019, he was ready to settle for the tattoo “as a pride in seeking to combine generation and organic. “
However, it was a big surprise that the code worked. Healy, a 33-year-old software engineer from Cork, Ireland, can now replace the link he issues (his non-public blog, card game regulations, his LinkedIn profile) in his free time.
Such frame art “is not common,” brian Greenberg, a 48-year-old Linux formula manager whose own QR code tattoo directed, at one point, to a GIF of the word “soup,” wrote in an email. over the years, the codes themselves have fallen at odds with the general public; Comscore, an analytics company, found that the use of QR codes by U. S. consumers for purchases had declined between 2018 and 2020.
Then Covid-19 struck. In the spring and summer, restaurants began displaying codes on outdoor dining tables instead of distributing menus. Schools use them for fitness checkups at the beginning of the school day. Vaccination sites use them to attach to appointments. pandemic, probably saw or scanned one.
The appeal of QR codes is obvious: they are contactless and easy to scan. They have a frank and impeccable logic, as Joe Waters, said, “QR Codes for Fools,” said, “They work. “For a time when many things don’t work, this app seduces.
The QR code (meaning “quick response”) invented in 1994 through Masahiro Hara, then a young engineer at a Japanese company called Denso Wave, a former advertising department of Denso, an automobile manufacturer. In a Zoom call and through a translator, he stated that he did not anticipate that the use of QR codes in the market would expand globally (originally created them to optimize auto parts production).
However, I was very pleased and proud to see that QR codes “support the protection and security of our society” during the pandemic.
When asked about the QR code in undeniable terms, he said, “The QR code is used to attach information and others. “
Although QR codes have been popular for invoices and other facilities in Asia, the United States, until recently, they were thought to be unreactive, even complicated. In 2015, TechCrunch called QR codes a “laughing stock” and a “frustrating symbol of overengineering” in the 41-word area. Scott Stratten, who wrote an e-book with his wife, Alison Stratten, about QR code errors, said the codes were the “Jurassic Park” of marketing, anything brands followed because they could, not necessarily because they should.
Several media outlets have praised the recent popularity of QR codes as a “renaissance” or a “backtracking” (not the first time: in 2017, Wired praised the “curious reversal of the dreaded QR code”). a lot of people, they never left.
In China, in particular, QR codes are ubiquitous: more than 90% of cell phone bills in China are made on WeChat and AliPay, which are in virtual wallets and QR codes, but as with many technologies, their use has also been a leader in recent years. questions about privacy, surveillance and social control. During the pandemic, for example, the Chinese government used QR codes to monitor citizens’ physical prestige.
In a 2017 blog post on its myriad uses in China, Connie Chan, a venture capital firm, wrote that QR codes “could nevertheless go from being ‘joke’ to being more often elsewhere” beyond Asia.
One of the reasons QR codes were ridiculed in the US is that the US was not a problem. But it’s not the first time It is that the brands followed them awkwardly in the early 2010s. Stratten stated that he had begun to see QR codes at the time, adding illogical positions such as billboards on the road (hands on the wheel) and subway stations without cellular service.
Then things have become even more random. In 2011, Quiring Monuments in Washington state began placing QR codes on graves. The company’s president, Jon Reece, said that although at first the challengers had said, “You’re not software, you’re tombstone men,” they still sell them to this day. QR codes would have been “as ubiquitous as big black boots” at New York Fashion Week in 2011. But the technicians have been called.
A broader adoption followed the iOS 11 update of the iPhone in 2017, which allowed users to scan QR codes with their phone’s camera (previously, they had to use a separate app).
In education, many instructors have discovered qr codes useful for sharing activities and links with their students. Josh Stock, a 36-year-old sixth-grade English instructor in Olathe, Kansas, said he was using QR codes to digitally distribute the school newspaper. .
“For my generation, it’s so simple to understand,” said Randi Hipper, a 17-year-old from Brooklyn who publishes QR codes under the care of MissTeenCrypto. She is positive about her future. ” I think this is just the beginning of QR codes, ” he said. “QR codes will surely be everything. “
“It’s great to see that despite everything adopted,” said Sandy Marie Romo, 40, an instructor at El Paso who has been using QR codes for years. “It shouldn’t have been a pandemic to do it. “
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