Once you understand what TAGs are, what they can be is sure to follow

While it is true that TAGs, like their cousins QR Codes, Datamatrix and a host of others, are two dimensional bar codes, what they really represent are connections between objects and the digital world. More importantly, TAGs are an opportunity and the foundation for a new tool - a tool that will be a significant milestone.

Since the origin of cuneiform in ancient Babylon, man has been both the progenitor and interpreter of written words. For more than 5,000 years, reading has been an economical advantage and the key to untold success. During much of this time, obtaining material to read proved as difficult as the art of reading itself. That is certainly no longer the case and while the ability to interpret written words remains advantageous, the ability to search and filter information is the new barrier to entry.

Look around you, right now, wherever you are. There is writing on everything around us - so much so we barely notice. There are words that entertain us and words that inform us; words that identify things and words to instruct us on how to use things. So many words that we are mostly oblivious to them until we have to focus on the details.

The complex workings of the things we write presents an ever growing problem. There simply is not enough space on the physical things to put all the information we require. Often the solution is to just write smaller but even then we find we need to resort to attachments, like cards, manuals, booklets, books and sometimes even sets of books. Given our accumulation of all the things that prosperity brings, there appears no end in sight to this growth.

And while the ability to read has served us well, it no longer holds the same historical guarantee. More advanced skills are now necessary. Even in areas such as professional services like medicine and the law, practitioners are finding themselves more and more dependent on the ability to search than to retain - understandable, given the mountains of information. The new key to success is the ability to extract precise, highly focused information, efficiently and quickly and that is a function TAG excels at.

TAGs are not readable. People cannot interpret them; nor can people store them in their memory. On the other hand, electronic devices like the 3 billion mobile phones on the planet can read TAGs and since those same phones can connect to services like translation, that means that those 3 billion people can all interpret a TAG. And that changes everything...