The Meshverse Journal

 … filed under William Gibson quotes: “the street finds it’s own uses for things” …

Welcome to the Beach of the Future, where high tide meets high-tech.

If this southern New Jersey city’s plans come to fruition next summer, Ocean City would be a place where an electronic wristband can pay for access to the beach, food, drinks and parking, and can even send a text message to a mother’s cell phone if a child strays too far away from her beach chair.

It would be a place where the garbage cans could e-mail the Public Works Department to come empty them, and lifeboats that float away could send signals to help the city track them down.

And people wouldn’t even think about trying to sneak onto the beach without paying: Beach checkers would be able to scan the sands with hand-held devices and instantly know who among that group of 15 people sprawled out on towels and under umbrellas didn’t pay to get onto the beach.

These are among the features of a citywide wireless network Ocean City is planning for next summer that would offer residents free Internet access. Tourists would pay about $6 a day, helping pay for the network.

Beach badges, those plastic or cloth scourges of the Jersey Shore could become a thing of the past if this catches on.

“This is the future,” said Karen Kinloch, a summer resident. “It’s where we’re at right now. It’s probably overdue. It’s kind of antiquated to take a piece of plastic and pin it to your swimsuit.”

APP.COM - Beach tags to give way to wireless wristbands | Asbury Park Press Online

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 12:21 am and is filed under Augmented Reality, Government, People, Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.