Hello Iris. Welcome To The Future.

A world where everyone knows your name may be just around the corner.  Within the next decade the time may com when employers, hospitals, stores and banks, not to mention law enforcement, will know your identity as soon as you walk through their doors.  They will read it in your eye.  Or in your iris to be more specific.

Austin Carr of the Fast Company website reports that an american biometrics research firm, Global Rainmakers Inc., and the city of Leon, Mexico plan to implement the first city wide biometrics identification system, first for law enforcement and later followed by the release of commercial applications.

"In the future, whether it's entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris," says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. "Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years," he says.

Like all new technology, adoption of this tech will start off slow.  Leon is just one city after all.  But notice the rate of exponential growth Mr. Carter suggests when he says that "every person, place and thing" will be connected to a central system within the next 10 years.

The eye scan technology, from the description provided by Mr. Carr of his experience at GRI's research facilities in New York, NY,  is going to revolutionize life as we know it.  It will be able to identify the passengers in vehicles as they travel down the highway.  It will be able to identify convicted shoplifters, thieves, robbers, even hot check writers, as they pass through a stores doorway.  Law enforcement officers will need only to have a person they have stopped look at a small hand held scanner to quickly know the identity of the person they have stopped.  The technology may even serve as the lock on your door.

The roll out of the Iris Scan system for the city of Leon is already underway according to Carr.

"GRI's scanning devices are currently shipping to the city, where integration will begin with law enforcement facilities, security check-points, police stations, and detention areas. This first phase will cost less than $5 million. Phase II, which will roll out in the next three years, will focus more on commercial enterprises. Scanners will be placed in mass transit, medical centers and banks, among other public and private locations.

The devices range from large-scale scanners like the Hbox (shown in the airport-security prototype above), which can snap up to 50 people per minute in motion, to smaller scanners like the EyeSwipe and EyeSwipe Mini, which can capture the irises of between 15 to 30 people per minute. "

I think it's going to be hard not to argue that we are headed, as Carr's frequent reference's to Orwell's novel 1984 implies, towards a world where the government, and anyone else with access to the Iris system data base, has the capacity to track each person through their everyday life using billions of sensors and scanners which are predicted to become ubiquitous in our public and private lives. Theoretically opting into the system will be voluntary, but the disincentives for choosing not to opt-in are large. As Carr notes, refusing to opt-in potentially makes it more likely to make you an object of suspicion or investigation.

"There's a lot of convenience to this--you'll have nothing to carry except your eyes," says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: "When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in."

I don't know about Iris, but I'm not all that comfortable with the thought of Big Brother moving in.