In Japan there are newspapers and books consisting almost entirely of barcodes. There is huge scope for tourism, paperless ticketing, identification, self-branding, affiliate marketing and numerous applications as yet unknown.
Is it too much to ask that our operators and manufacturers do two things: first, agree on a barcode standard and, second, preload the software into all smartphones? If that happened, barcodes could play a major creative role in the era of mobile Web browsing that is only just beginning.



