Artist develops gesture-based payment technology

Artist Heidi Hinder has developed wearable technology that allows users to exchange money through physical gestures including handshakes, hugs and tap dances.

The craft-based project, dubbed ‘Money No Object’, relies on RFID chips worn by the buyer and the seller in rings or gloves to complete monetary transactions.

The artist developed the idea in Bristol through the Watershed Craft and Residencies Programme and worked with Pervasive Media Studio’s technology team in order to turn basic human interactions into monetary payments.

“My main aim was that any technology I incorporated should unite people, bringing them closer together by triggering some form of physical or emotional exchange between users,” writes Hinder in her research report on the Watershed website.


“I hoped that the crafted objects would not only raise questions conceptually about money and value, but also facilitate meaningful or thought-provoking human-to-human interactions, or sensory experiences, mediated by an appropriate form of digital technology, and embedded within a tactile, appealing and intriguing object, or series of objects,” she continues.

Hinder believes that her project could be used as a reinvented replacement for the clear plastic donation box.

She suggests on her website that visitors could buy a piece of wearable technology from a gift shop and load it with credit, before using it to make purchases “gaining some alternative emotional value to their payment transaction”.

Hinder is currently looking for investment in the idea to help her continue with the research and trial it in a museum or gallery.

Wearable technology is gaining an increasing amount of interest as a range of technology manufacturers aim to bring new products to market, including Google Glass and the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch.


Labels: Purchase Structured Settlements,Mesothelioma Lawyers San Diego,Secured Loan Calculator,Structured Settlement
Investments,Endowment Selling,Mesothelioma Patients,Mesothelioma attorney san diego,Austin Texas dwi lawyers,New
York Mesothelioma Lawyers,Phoenix dui lawyers,Secured Loans,Insurance Auto,Phoenix dui attorney,car free insurance
online quote,students debt consolidation loans,Pennsylvania mesothelioma lawyers,data recovery Denver,adverse
credit remortgages,bad credit remortgages,data recovery service los angeles

PayPal boldly ponders what no payment processor has pondered before: space

PayPal, which claims more than 128 million active accounts in 193 markets and 25 currencies around the globe, is now looking at outer space.

 

As space tourism is expected to take off, PayPal is exploring what payment systems will be like in outer space.

 

The payments processor is launching Thursday with the SETI Institute and others an initiative called PayPal Galactic, which will bring together leaders in the space industry to discuss the issues surrounding the commercialization of space.

 

The need for a payment system beyond earth already exists, the payments processor said in a blog post on Wednesday. Astronauts on space stations need, for example, to pay for bills back on earth and for entertainment, like music and e-books, while in space, it added.



"Creating a secure and functional commerce system that can operate in space at scale will not be easy, but with the support of the scientific community, other technology companies and the public at large, we hope to find the solutions to address these challenges," PayPal wrote in the blog post.

 

The eBay unit admits that it is just at the beginning.

 

Some of the issues to be addressed by PayPal Galactic in tandem with scientists and researchers are how will standard currency look like in a "truly cash-free interplanetary society," how will banking systems have to adapt, how customer support needs to develop, regulations in the new environment, and developing risk and fraud management systems.

 

The initiative brings together scientists and space industry leaders from SETI in Mountain View, California and Space Tourism Society in Los Angeles, and former astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

 

A number of companies have been set up to offer space tourism. Virgin Galactic, for example, said in May that it is on track to be the world's first "commercial spaceline." Some companies plan to set up space hotels, according to reports.

 

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl