So I am doing an engineering project for a professional engineering course. My group is focusing on the reduction/elimination of paper in advertising, especially at the student center. In order to implement the design, we are trying to determine whether students would be Okay with associating certain data with their student card. We need a yes or no response to the following poll, and we need as many responders as possible.


"Would you associate information such as club involvement, sport involvement, faculty, and area of residence (i.e. Hamilton vs. Oakville) with your student card, if the data was kept highly secure? The potential upside for yourself would be more relevant and helpful advertising, and significantly reduced paper consumption."

Thanks everyone!

No

Okay, the poll is up. Please select your option at the top of the screen now

Feel free to discuss it as well.

yes I would

Oops, sorry! I read the question wrong. I thought it asked "Would you want to keep all your information on your student card for more relevant advertising?"

Now that I see that it would reduce overall paper consumption (presumably via administrative stuff at Mac), I would like to change my answer to yes!

Ah 1P03, I do not miss that at all.

I don't have much to contribute, but I voted yes under the assumption that "highly secure" meant "perfectly secure".

But then again, I don't have too much of a problem with people knowing what city I'm from or my faculty or my (admittedly limited) club involvement. I'd be a little more hesitant if it were details like my address, marks, SIN, or the other important stuff associated with my card.

Also, GABBO signs are a huge waste of paper.

No, unless with the club involvement information I get advertisements for relevant pool supplies

(I kid! but in reality, I voted no.)

Haha, pool supplies like useful valves for saturday mornings at concrete toboggan hills

So to clarify for osme people, the information would not include anything highly sensitive: No PIN numbers or SIN numbers or ID numbers at all. Just information that a system could take and tally up, saying "There are 100 people in the building, 30 of them are engineers, 10 are Med Rad, and 60 are science students. none of them are on sports teams, but most like to watch football, and there are a few members of mecVT here... Our ad display system will now post a lot of science faculty related ads, a few engineering ones, ads for the varsity football game coming up... OH and look, theres a MecVT meeting tonight: We will display that too"

So that's how she's aiming to work.

To clarify for some people, the information would not include anything highly sensitive: No PIN numbers or SIN numbers or ID numbers at all. Just information that a system could take and tally up, saying "There are 100 people in the building, 30 of them are engineers, 10 are Med Rad, and 60 are science students. none of them are on sports teams, but most like to watch football, and there are a few members of mecVT here... Our ad display system will now post a lot of science faculty related ads, a few engineering ones, ads for the varsity football game coming up... OH and look, theres a MecVT meeting tonight: We will display that too"

ok so where would the advertisements be posted? on tv screens?

How would you track student cards?

What about people who are looking to be involved but dont know if it exists?
Sounds like a lengthy questionnaire that would need to be filled out.

my vote is No.

If practicable it would be a great idea.

Ads would be on TV screens, or (as we are looking into right now, a holo projection screen... I've seen them used quite often in europe. They make the venue look a lot more technologically advanced!). The screens would be placedi n busy areas: Our main "target" for the project (which is all purely hypothetical btw) would be the student center. Student cards would be tracked with RFID tags: simple, inexpensive, and the technology is used to track books leaving Titles: Especially the ones that SHOULDN'T be leaving titles... i.e. stolen books.
In order to place student's preferences on the card, we had thought that some online system, or some simple card scanner with a screen in Titles might be a plausible idea. As for getting people to do it: It's not our job to design the economics behind it all, but I would imagine that incentives like contests could be involved for 2 minutes of a student's time?

Anyways, that's how it would work, for those interested. But note that the voting is not for the project as a whole: We just want to know who would be comfortable with some non-identifieable information on their student card. If you haven't already, please read the first post as it is the key question! Thanks.

People always get really angry when you do anything to track them no matter how insignificant it is.

It is nothing more than irrational fear from very dumb people who dont realize that systems will have problems, you have to work around them, not just run away from something that might have a huge benefit.


I would be in favor of this system. Hopefully your project gets to be one of the last 10.

Originally Posted by Rossclot

People always get really angry when you do anything to track them no matter how insignificant it is.

It is nothing more than irrational fear from very dumb people who dont realize that systems will have problems, you have to work around them, not just run away from something that might have a huge benefit.

What about those of us who enjoy not having Big Brother watching all the time? It's not about an irrational fear, but about a principle, about the idea that we should be able to live without being scrutinized and watched.