Sexual Health: QR Codes to the Rescue
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Have you noticed that belt buckle technology hasn’t evolved much in the last few decades? Me too. In the middle of the 20th Century, guys had roughly two styles of belt buckles to choose from: a Miles Standish pilgrim-style belt buckle or an outlandish Texas-size longhorn belt buckle. Not much creativity holding up our pants.
Those days are gone.
A company called Fluid Forms has launched a customized belt buckle product. Design your own belt buckle and have it created and shipped to where you put on your trousers every day.
Now here’s where it gets interesting, here’s where customized belt buckles bring the space of above your man-junk into the cyber realm. Techcrunch has reported that belt buckles have been designed to include QR codes on them. Like your everyday supermarket bar code, QR codes can be scanned (with smartphone like Apple’s iPhone), relaying information back to the scanner. The author in the Techcrunch article, Scott Merrill, stopped short of discovering the true benefit of bar code belt buckles: halting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases or STDs.
Imagine a singles bar where all the occupants wore bar code belt buckles (BCB2s for simplicity’s sake). Using your smart phone, a quick scan of a prospective love interest would bring up their social network information, the number of partners they’ve had, and the STDs they’ve contracted. Easy peasy! One could even ‘check into’ an STD like one does on Foursquare with venues. For example, checking into Chlamydia would alert the user to other BCB2 wearers who share their STD – a conversation starter, a tidbit that helps break the ice in a crowded bar.
My hope is that a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would recognize the positive impacts BCB2s could have on world health and fund their large-scale roll out.
Because these belt buckles aren’t going to make themselves.
