Friday, January 10, 2014

In the future, will I be able to sue my local burger bar for irresponsibly selling me a burger?

Location services are not new but the technology around this subject has certainly developed and improved over the last decade. In particular I take an interest in iBeacon. Now beyond the rather mundane from virtual post-it notes, development of the attention economy, in place transactions, enhancements to intelligent software agents to nefarious uses and what is called MALT (micromapping advertising location transaction) then there is a number of interesting possibilities.

For example, if my wearable happens to know how much I've been exercising, my heart rate, my cholesterol intake and transfers that information to the local burger bar as I walk in then not only can they change the menu and grass me up to my local health insurer for an unhealthy lifestyle but will they have a legal responsibility or duty of care to make sure they deliver healthy food? Will I be able to sue for failure to do this?

Will this encourage the formation of a black market of burger bars, off the grid with dampening technology preventing anyone snooping on my bad habits? Oh, this should be fun. The combination of wearable tech and transactional location based services has endless interesting possibilities.