Digital signage, privacy and Generation i

MSNBC raised alarm bells today when it reported that an Intel/Microsoft digital signage proof of concept demo at CES last week would allow retailers to gather personal information about you. It showed a box of Trojan condoms on a store shelf, implying that retailers would use the technology to track your every move. Does it? MSNBC never answered its own question. But that's the wrong question to ask.

The reporter showed a video clip of the digital signage demo while explaining how an embedded camera could analyze your image to determine your height, weight and sex in order to perform "targeted marketing." In the demo, users interact with a holographic touch screen which creates a targeted product pitch to the consumer standing in front of it.

What the reporter didn't ask was how this information would be personally identifiable. Would it be linked back to a database that uniquely identifies you? In the video Intel describes the feature as "anonymous video analytics."

But the question is moot because this type of information is willingly given up by online shoppers every day. Bricks and mortar retailers are simply trying to catch up. They have far less information on their customers - including clothing sizes - than do their online counterparts. Unless the customer uses a loyalty card, retailers don't have a reliable way to uniquely identify you. Cash? Forget it. Credit card transactions? The data goes to the servicer. Retailers then pay for limited access to it.

Then there's online. If real-world retailers used the Amazon.com model for targeted advertising the retailer would reach into your pocket every time you entered the store and remove an object (the cookie, perhaps an RFID tag) that uniquely identifies you. It would then link that in real time to a back-end database that stored a complete history of everywhere you'd been in the store and the route you took during previous visits, what you bought, and what you put back on the shelf. The sales person, armed with that knowledge, and other information you've divulged, such as your birthday, would check a heads up display and then step forward to pitch related items you might also like. How's that underwear holding up? Time for new?

Why do we find such targeting selling creepy in a bricks and mortar retailer but perfectly acceptable online? Perhaps Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington had it right: We don’t really care about privacy anymore.

Why? Because we tacitly agree to pay for the convenience of online retail shopping and free online tools offered by businesses like Google with what Greg Conti calls "micropayments of personal information." Because we like what we're getting in return.

At least some of us do. But not all of us. What Arrington didn't say is that there's a generation gap at work here. While old media outlets like MSNBC serve up scare stories to the 40- and 50-somethings, Generation i (who have grown up in the texting and iPhone era) couldn't care less.

What they do want when it comes to privacy is a choice. Given a choice, however, they're comfortable giving up far more personal information than are the Baby Boomers, who saw first hand the abuse of a much smaller cache of personal information by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and the Nixon administration in the '60s and '70s. The question authority generation never really trusted the establishment after that.

Today the answers about you are already out there, the reasoning goes. So get over it. Online, personal information is the coin of the realm. The only question is, where do you want to spend your personal information credits?

What do I want to divulge today?