This is about a privilege we enjoy in the e-world but we don’t in our real world.
We all read and write. Earlier we used to do that only with pen and paper. Now-a-days we also use a computer for it. And with all those things that we can do using a computer, we really get used to it; sometimes so much that we start hating the real world for its limitations.
And when it comes to reading and writing, one thing which everyone might have added to their wish list, maybe very secretly, is to be able to search words, phrases or any text in their real world as they can do it in their virtual world. This is one thing which has made life online much simpler than life offline. Be it a text file, document or the internet, you can search for that text with some vital clue to the problem you are trying to solve. And “BHAMM”… here comes the result. You now know if your memory is in fact correct in telling you that the text is there and you don’t need to search the complete book or document to get to this line on the second-last page.
Searching a whole book without even scanning the pages, sound more like asking for some sort of magic. However, searching a scanned area, such as a page from a book, as it appears on the display of your digital camera is more down to earth. To make this even more realistic, we can imagine a cell-phone with this feature. I consider cell phone as being more realistic because, today’s cell phones (at least medium to high price grade ones) already have two components essential for this feature: a way to enter what you want to search (keypad) and a way to scan and display the page (camera display).
Now imagine this: You are running late for this flight. Even though you had checked in online, you’re sure that you’ll miss the flight. While entering the terminal from the parking lot you see this flight status display board. But, how hard you try, somehow you are not able to locate the flight (just due to sheer nervousness). Finally, you thought, why not confirm that your flight is not listed in the board and move on. You point your camera phone’s camera to the board and type in the flight number and ask it to search… and “BINGO”, there is your flight! The gate has been changed and luckily you’ll not be heading to the wrong gate.
I know that’s a bad example. But it’s an extreme case that can actually happen. Now that I have already discussed about one feature which we could borrow from our technology world to our real world, one very important question comes up: Who would actually do it and why would they do it. In terms of who, it’s an open world, whoever finds the right answer to why will do it. However, as I stated above, cell phone companies are in a much better position to do it. As cell-phones are becoming more and more of a bundled product of assorted functions, companies are trying to build in more and more features into their phones. If one company hinges in this way, we could see everyone going for it. That answers a possible why for it. Before closing this topic, I’d like to bring up one technical hurdle we might have to cross in order to achieve this. Here it goes a bit technical: The processing required for this kind of search is very intensive, as it will have to make two dimensional comparisons of image data rather than text data. So, we should be okay if our cell-phones are able to do such a kind of processing. Well, if not today, we can certainly see this feature coming out in the next few years to come.
We all read and write. Earlier we used to do that only with pen and paper. Now-a-days we also use a computer for it. And with all those things that we can do using a computer, we really get used to it; sometimes so much that we start hating the real world for its limitations.
And when it comes to reading and writing, one thing which everyone might have added to their wish list, maybe very secretly, is to be able to search words, phrases or any text in their real world as they can do it in their virtual world. This is one thing which has made life online much simpler than life offline. Be it a text file, document or the internet, you can search for that text with some vital clue to the problem you are trying to solve. And “BHAMM”… here comes the result. You now know if your memory is in fact correct in telling you that the text is there and you don’t need to search the complete book or document to get to this line on the second-last page.
Searching a whole book without even scanning the pages, sound more like asking for some sort of magic. However, searching a scanned area, such as a page from a book, as it appears on the display of your digital camera is more down to earth. To make this even more realistic, we can imagine a cell-phone with this feature. I consider cell phone as being more realistic because, today’s cell phones (at least medium to high price grade ones) already have two components essential for this feature: a way to enter what you want to search (keypad) and a way to scan and display the page (camera display).
Now imagine this: You are running late for this flight. Even though you had checked in online, you’re sure that you’ll miss the flight. While entering the terminal from the parking lot you see this flight status display board. But, how hard you try, somehow you are not able to locate the flight (just due to sheer nervousness). Finally, you thought, why not confirm that your flight is not listed in the board and move on. You point your camera phone’s camera to the board and type in the flight number and ask it to search… and “BINGO”, there is your flight! The gate has been changed and luckily you’ll not be heading to the wrong gate.
I know that’s a bad example. But it’s an extreme case that can actually happen. Now that I have already discussed about one feature which we could borrow from our technology world to our real world, one very important question comes up: Who would actually do it and why would they do it. In terms of who, it’s an open world, whoever finds the right answer to why will do it. However, as I stated above, cell phone companies are in a much better position to do it. As cell-phones are becoming more and more of a bundled product of assorted functions, companies are trying to build in more and more features into their phones. If one company hinges in this way, we could see everyone going for it. That answers a possible why for it. Before closing this topic, I’d like to bring up one technical hurdle we might have to cross in order to achieve this. Here it goes a bit technical: The processing required for this kind of search is very intensive, as it will have to make two dimensional comparisons of image data rather than text data. So, we should be okay if our cell-phones are able to do such a kind of processing. Well, if not today, we can certainly see this feature coming out in the next few years to come.
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