QR Code – a 2d barcode format which is becoming quite popular with the new generation of Japanese cameraphones. Like ROT13 (a simple letter substitution scheme which encodes “secrets” as “frpergf”) the effect on the blog isn’t so much encryption as it is obfuscation – it requires a scanning program/device to return the text to human-readable form. (For example, the QR Code image here reproduces the next paragraph.)
Text which is optimized for machine use might not be human-readable, yet remain quite human-friendly. QRcode is designed so that cameraphones can quickly upload text from physical objects. I can imagine a QR Code print preview or a QR Code feed (something like an XML feed) available in browsers or via blogware. This would allow users to download text entries from a browser screen into their cameraphone/pda without having to establish any kind of wireless / bluetooth / cable sync.
Text may be stylized in a way we are unfamiliar with, as in blackletter – it may be interspersed with some markup we don’t understand, such as HTML – it may be be a substitution system we aren’t familiar with, such as braille or morse code – or it may be a system that, while technically human-readable, isn’t particularly optimized for reading by humans, as with barcodes, which were originally an adaptation of morse to the needs of machines (although barcodes can be read, if slowly).
I’m also really attracted to the idea of QR Code, not just prose, but fiction – perhaps a piece along the lines of Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg’s Implementation project (a serialized novel distributed as stickers). The story could be distributed on objects with each giving a snippet of story and indicating where another piece could be retrieved. The attraction for me is that the image is unreadable until the reader scans it into a phone – the act of translating the text and uploading it into memory are the same, so a dedicated reader will end up collecting all the pieces of the puzzle in one memory chip (vs. Implementation, where the stickers tend to stay ’stuck’ as they thematically meditate on the nature of place).
