Looking out of focus to see great things.
It's about human advancement. Most of the true inventions of the world simply come to fruition from looking at a problem in a different way, then figuring out the solution. Flip the script and see what happens. This what researchers at the MIT Media Lab have been working on this year in the form of Bokodes, tiny beam of light at a specific brightness and angle that can be read like a barcode with a standard camera. After all the concept comes from the bokeh effect seen in our out of focus pictures. Bokodes, after migrating from the research labs, will have some considerable advantages over current methods like QR Codes: size, distance, data. Bokodes occupy less real estate and a less distracting design than current 2d barcodes while packing in more information. The biggest benefit is the distance at which they can be read - a 2.5 micron bokode can be read by a camera from over 13 feet away! Bokeh Effect Photo: (left) Shermee (right) Lel4nd (busy) How Bokodes Work