Samsung's judgmental box of tricks gets personal

IF THERE'S ONE THING WORSE than intrusive Orwellian technology, it's rude intrusive technology. Now Samsung has invented a machine which passes judgement on you as you walk down the street. It's a machine that could quite easily label you a fat minger.

On Thursday in Hammersmith, the Korean tech giant launched a bundle of new products for people who like installing giant plasma screens. Hoteliers, retailers, railroaders, resellers. You know the type.

There were 32-inch LCDs here. And 82-inchers over there. Touchscreens for car showrooms. And Matrix ID, which is as futuristic as the name suggests.

It consists of big Lego-like screens, which can be joined together to form one giant structure, be it a single screen that covers an entire wall or a giant cube with one continuous picture controlled by fiendishly clever software. It was difficult to maintain any sort of attention span. I lost count at 17 products.

But there is one I won't forget, because it'll soon haunt us all. The most ominous new development is an application of Samsung's Magic Info software, which runs an analysis on you, then makes a snap judgement about your lifestyle based on the data. This tells the world what it thinks of you. Here's how it works.

A 3D motion sensor notices your presence. An infra red camera then feeds data to a facial recognition system, which works out all your essential demographics from its impression of your face. Once it's read your lines, and decided your age, weight and gender, it promptly directs the display to run an appropriate advert, based on its prediction of your tastes.

So, for example, if I was walking past, the system might jump to the conclusion that I really like pies. And start projecting giant images of cornish pasties and steak and kidney puddings onto an 82-inch screen.

Well I don't know about you, but I don't want some uppity Korean machine judging my highly-tuned physique when I'm innocently waddling around a conference centre.

Oi... Samsung! No! µ