🚀 go-pugleaf

played over and over his amazement
at a demonstration of a supermarket scanner...how out of touch it meant he
was with the real-life of us little people who shop for ourselves?

That is machine vision, using a laser scanner.

It is quite sophisticated these days.

*   "BANKS WILL SOON SEE POSITIVE EYE-D", The New York Post, May 20, 1996
*   
*   Two New York Banks are considering using retina-scanning technology
*   to allow customer access to their ATMs. The scanning occurs automatically
*   when the customer gets within three feet of the ATM.

#   "Eye To Eye: Contact!", Information Week magazine, June 3 1996
#   
#   Computer passwords may be a thing of the past using a scanner that maps
#   over 400 identifying features of your iris. The system will be tested at
#   ATMs in Columbus, Ohio later this year. The company has been inundated
#   with calls from other industries interested in using the technology.

And what about head shots of people...any 'machine vision' deals there?

*  "New System Lets Computer Identify Pictures and Images"
*  The New York Times, By John Holusha, [I failed to date the article clipping]
*  
*  New technology that may help solve one of the thorniest problems in computer
*  science---teaching machines to recognize pictures--- was announced yesterday
*  by officials of the David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, NJ. "We are
*  going to make a business out of this", said IS VP Curtis R. Carlson. "It
*  does things on a personal computer that used to require a supercomputer."

#  "FBI Setting Standards for Computer Picture File of Criminals", NYT, 11/5/95
#  
#  A meeting called "Mug Shot and Facial Image Standards Conference" was held
#  to set facial image standards. The standards will take into account
#  emerging technologies like software that determines if two facial images
#  belong to the same person, even from composite sketches.

Yep. Even using photographs.