In 2009 Nokia offered an application for people in Finland who visited the Kamppi shopping center. The app let them see where they were inside the building, and helped them navigate to the stores that had the stuff they wanted. The experiment was declared a “success” because over 15,000 people ended up trying it, a lot considering the population of Helsinki is a hair over half a million people.
Micello isn’t quite the same thing, they are not going to use advanced algorithms to triangulate your precise location via WiFi routers and cell towers, but what they can do is offer you a map of the store you’re in, or a store you want to explore at some later point in time. Launch the app, type in the location, and boom, out comes a map for you to play with.
Sounds cool … not. What happens when stores reshuffle their sections, to keep things fresh? What happens when everyone’s phone has NFC and they simply tap on an “information point” and not only get the map of the building they’re in, but coupons, current events, and more? Whatever happened to exploration? To quote Kurt Vonnegut in an interview he had with David Brancaccio in October 2005 on PBS:
“[When Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
So go to your local shopping mall, stuff you face silly at the food court, and then spend an hour or two farting around. You don’t need an app for that.
[Via: Read Write Web]