Originally published December 11 2014
Pizza Hut to retina scan customers' eyes to create 'perfect' Orwellian fast food
by Jonathan Benson, staff writer
(NaturalNews) The nation's largest pizza chain has developed a so-called "subconscious" ordering menu that reportedly monitors customers' eye movements in real time in order to predict, without any human interactions, what they want on their fast food pies.
Tech Times explains that the Pizza Hut corporation developed the Orwellian technology after rival Domino's unveiled its own unusual pizza tracker application, which allows customers to observe the assembly, baking and delivery of their pizzas, also in real time.
According to reports, Pizza Hut's technology goes a step further, utilizing Big Brother-esque retina-scan technology to track what customers are looking at on the ingredients menu. The system then automatically builds a "perfect" pizza based on customers' unique eye movements.
"We have quite an extensive subconscious relationship with our food and it's certainly the case psychologically that 'we eat with our eyes,'" stated Dr. Simon Moore, a consumer psychologist, to Tech Times about the technology.
"We are automatically drawn to foods that give us more nutrition," claimed Dr. Moore. "[I]t is a safety mechanism we've inherited from primitive man that still plays a role in our subconscious decision making, even when we might be choosing pizza."
Biometrics allow corporations like Pizza Hut direct access to your core being
Though this probably isn't the case, as most mainstream consumers seem to naturally favor nutritionless junk foods that quickly satisfy cravings rather than nourish, the technology itself appears highly effective at gauging what people actually want to eat in the moment.
The Pizza Hut corporation claims that its retina-scan technology is 98 percent accurate, and that it is currently being tested in trial markets with a planned release nationwide sometime in the near future. How it actually works, though, remains a mystery.
Some clues can be found, however, in the foundational science behind biometrics, which is increasingly being used to keep tabs on individuals by identifying and processing their very essence through things like iris patterns, voice analysis and fingerprints.
As explained in a PBS article, biometrics goes beyond just using external identifiers like PIN codes and pass phrases, both of which are manually input, to identify user preferences or access rights -- it probes the very core of humanity itself.
"[Biometrics] are a fundamental shift in the way we are identified," wrote Tim De Chant for Nova Next. "Unlike traditional identification which you must either remember or carry with you, biometrics are you."
US government uses biometrics to track citizens, violate personal privacy
The ominous implications of this extend far beyond just ordering a pizza online, of course, which might seem harmless, even when it involves the use of biometrics. By allowing corporations direct access to your inner being in this way, you open up the door for mass exploitation and violation of your personal privacy.
This is the same technology, you must remember, that the US government began implementing after 9/11 to supposedly identify potential terrorists, tracking people with iris scan, palm scan and facial recognition technologies.
"I think the biggest problem with biometric collection is that once the government has your biometric, it becomes incredibly useful for a whole host of purposes, and the government tends not to want to delete it," explained Jennifer Lynch, an attorney with the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), to Nova Next.
"We've seen that with some of the data sharing programs in the federal government right now. A biometric collected for an immigration purpose could then be used for a criminal purpose."
Sources for this article include:
http://www.dailydot.com
http://www.techtimes.com
http://www.pbs.org
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