TL;DR.This was a thing I wrote on the history of QR codes while researching 'Just Evil Enough' . I liked posting pieces like this on Medium (until they put my content behind a paywall). Now testing long form posts on X. lmk what you think! Sign of the Times Symbols and signs have been part of humanity’s base code for tens of thousands of years. From cave paintings to warning symbols, star drawings and tree-hearts hopefully carved; the semiotic layers of our past and present are profoundly important and yet often overlooked. The QR code was invented in 1994 by Masahiro Hara, an engineer at Toyota’s subsidiary Denso Wave. It was an elegant time-saving solution when scanning multiple barcodes for automobile parts during the assembly process. QR stands for Quick Response. Its precursor (the barcode) is a simple two-dimensional black and white image that can be easily read by an infrared scanner. The scanner records the lines and distances between each bar, and translates them into a numerical code. The first barcode was patented in 1952, and the engineer who created it went on to work at IBM. Fun fact; the first barcodes were circular, like a bullseye. QR codes are basically barcodes that have hulked out. They encode not just one, or two, but three layers of information. Masahiro was inspired by the black and white tiles of a Go board, and like the game itself, created something that was simultaneously simple and startlingly complex. First, there are the three ubiquitous corner squares containing the finder pattern. This enables an optical scanner to recognise and frame the data. Two more patterns can be found inside the first; the alignment pattern and the timing pattern, the latter serving as the coordinate system for the code itself. The smallest QR code is just 21 x 21 pixels. The largest matrix is 177 x 177 pixels and can encode over 7,000 numeric characters (or 4,296 alphanumeric characters). For context, this entire essay could be carried in a single (V40) QR code. The 2020/2021 Covid-19 pandemic compressed and accelerated technology in myriad ways, but the mass-adoption of QR codes is probably one of the most compelling. Restaurants, struggling to survive the impact of covid restrictions, adopted QR codes in vast swathes. Not only could they do away with physical menus that needed to be sterilised between customers, they saved on printing and could easily update menus and pricing. And germ-phobic people of all ages, race and creed overcome the friction of adoption so they could get fed. With people becoming rapidly familiar with QR code usage in everyday life, governments soon adopted them for more essential functions, such as COVID track-and-trace apps, vaccine appointments and even vaccine passports, with your unique code, containing your vaccine credentials. It became a talisman guaranteeing safe passage across borders. Not only did QR codes become our access pass for other countries, they became a multipass for all things digital. With significantly more data storage than a basic barcode, these multimodal signals have become the waygates to online worlds. Just like pagan priests carved tri-spirals on the stones at the winter solstice temple of Newgrange, in today’s world, QR codes bridge the divide between the mundane and the miraculous. In the cacophony of today’s technology, much has been said of the metaverse, and its immersive potential. Early adopters explored benefits for PTSD soldiers, agoraphobics, the elderly and the incarcerated. Gaming giants and social incumbents staked early claims in the wild west of new virtual worlds; however Stephenson's dream has also been overhyped and oversold - for now at least, a pixelated, two dimensional shadowland where we try to escape the smell of desperation that hangs here in the very real and very visceral now. Herman Narula, the founder of Improbable, said of the Metaverse “We should be talking about Narnia, but we’re discussing the wardrobe”. Bulky headsets might be occupying our thoughts but the real bridges between the real and the virtual are already here. Tucked into passports, nestled in the ad creative, bouncing around superbowl screens, or described by drone-swarm in the midnight sky over Texas, every QR code that exists in the physical world punctures the digital divide. All code mutates, whether accidentally or on purpose. And QR codes have been ripe for subversion. In the first flurry of imagination at the start of the century, marketers and brands leveraged their novelty. QR codes appeared on T-shirts, shaved into haircuts, graffitied on walls and baked onto tacos; but soon the novelty wore off. In 2017, TechCrunch said “​​Remember when QR codes were the next big thing?” No one predicted their timely resurrection. For most SMBs, especially brick and mortar stores (those un-reliant on web-based revenue at least) hosting and maintaining a website is a royal pain in the ass. But QR codes don’t rely on websites. A QR code can bring you to any URL on the web. It can bring you to a facebook page. To an image file, forum, video file or blog. It really doesn’t matter where that content lives, simply that it exists and can be linked to. The rudimentary connection is more akin to what the net first looked like before Google became the front door. QR codes bypass the established search engine route to the indexed web. To play on the indexed web, you need sensible, logical URL structures, you need relevancy, findability, robot files, snippets, title tags and meta-descriptions. You need mobile optimised, fast loading, well written, link friendly, Google-approved landing pages. QR codes must really piss Google off because they blow all those requirements out of the water. A QR code can be a key to any place on the internet - not just the destinations pre-approved by the ever changing Pagerank algorithm, which ultimately decides what destinations rank first on Google. (After the ads, of course). In the west, QR codes peaked in November 2021 and online interest has been in decline since. So will this particular mechanism slide into obscurity just like it did a decade ago? We think not. Whether we consciously accept them or not, signs and sigils are part of our base code. Our own code wraps around these symbols until they become enmeshed in our culture. As digital worlds continue to overlay this physical one, alternative entry points will become more and more essential, especially ones that bypass or subvert internet norms. AI is also making those doorways more creative, and more beautiful. And let's not forget, in parts of the world where Google can’t reach, QR codes never really went away...

Resonance microfestival comes to Ballina-Killaloe this September ilovelimerick.ie/resonance-m… via @ilovelimerick

Right folks. Microfestivals are trending. @ResonanceTalks is a brand-spanking new, teenytiny festival with a huge vision, taking place on the shores of Lough Derg in a 13th Century Cathedral in September. Exploring innovation and technology. Forest bathing, innovation workshops, world class speakers, music and... um ukuleles?! Inspired by the talks of TED and the music of Other Voices. What more could you ask for? (A discount code obvs - hit me up in the DMs) Resonance-loughderg.com #resonancetalks #discoverloughderg #WildAtlanticWay