Walmart wants to know your heart rate and temperature
by Michael Cook | 13 Oct 2018 |
About 324 million people live in the United States. About 140 million of them visit Walmart in person or online every week, many of them pushing shopping trolleys. Is there an opportunity for gathering Big Data here?
Probably. The retail giant has applied for a patent which can track a shopper’s heart rate, temperature, grip strength and walking speed through the handle of the trolley. The patent, published in August, is called a "System and Method for a Biometric Feedback Cart Handle".
Walmart intends to us the data it reaps to care for the health of its customers, according to the patent. the internet-connected trolleys would alert employees when a customer falls sick. Tech blog CBInsights says the device will not track personal data:
Without extracting any personally identifiable data, information collected could be used to assess trends across multiple customers in real-time: Clusters of alerts, such as several shoppers appearing to need assistance at one time, could be used to anticipate problems like arguments among customers or broken items in an aisle.
However, it’s not difficult to imagine that the information could be used for marketing purposes. A blogger at aol.com commented:
Internet retailers already excel at targeting us for products they know we want to buy based on our online shopping behavior. It's not so easy to gather data about your preferences while you shop in brick and mortar stores.But what if Walmart could see if your heart rate increases when you pass a new display? What if they could see it drops when you walk by another? This technology would essentially monitor how customers are feeling while they shop. Walmart could then use that data to optimize the design of their stores for ultimate feel-good vibes. Or to entice people to stay in their stores for a few minutes longer, which is the tried-and-true way to get people to spend more.Though the creepy shopping cart handle doesn't exist yet, it's not hard to imagine it quickly coming to fruition if the patent is approved. Similar technology already exists on treadmills, which have sensors in handles that can gather your heart rate.
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Being a good editor requires a certain personality type: someone persnickety, obsessive, hawk-eyed and meticulous. Not being that sort of person myself, I can still appreciate their virtues. A good editor fusses about capitalisation, proper usage, consistent spelling, and the Oxford comma and loses sleep over knaves who cannot distinguish between “discrete” and “discreet”.
But there is one point on which the good editor and I agree: the enormity of writing “normalcy” when one means “normality”. I recently read in a not-to-be-named journal, “As the boundaries between human and ‘the other’, technological, biological and environmental, are eroded and perceptions of normalcy are challenged...” No. No. No. No. The word is “normality”.
The virus of “normalcy” has spread like a particularly pernicious strain of influenza through the media. A quick Google search brings up: “Nikki Haley's Departure Is Shocking Because Of Its Normalcy” and “Anger Recedes as Normalcy, Good Humor Mark Kavanaugh’s First Day on Supreme Court”.
Do you know who put “normalcy” on the map, so to speak? Warren G. Harding, who succeeded Woodrow Wilson in the White House. In 1920 the slogan of his campaign was “a return to normalcy”. The word should have died with his reputation as the worst of American presidents.
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. And please don’t get me started on the misuse of “enormity” for “enormousness”.
But there is one point on which the good editor and I agree: the enormity of writing “normalcy” when one means “normality”. I recently read in a not-to-be-named journal, “As the boundaries between human and ‘the other’, technological, biological and environmental, are eroded and perceptions of normalcy are challenged...” No. No. No. No. The word is “normality”.
The virus of “normalcy” has spread like a particularly pernicious strain of influenza through the media. A quick Google search brings up: “Nikki Haley's Departure Is Shocking Because Of Its Normalcy” and “Anger Recedes as Normalcy, Good Humor Mark Kavanaugh’s First Day on Supreme Court”.
Do you know who put “normalcy” on the map, so to speak? Warren G. Harding, who succeeded Woodrow Wilson in the White House. In 1920 the slogan of his campaign was “a return to normalcy”. The word should have died with his reputation as the worst of American presidents.
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. And please don’t get me started on the misuse of “enormity” for “enormousness”.
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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