DIGITAL AGE-ADVANTAGE TO THE CONSUMER OR THE INDUSTRY?

Information Technology has become so omnipotent that there is practically no field of human activity which is untouched by this powerful tool. In the food area use of electronics and advanced computing systems have made it easier to increase productivity, improve quality and safety of foods and improve management efficiency. The ultimate in electronics, the robots are likely to be normal fixtures in the production floor of many food processing companies in not too distant a future. Digital technology has enabled consumers to make informed choice of the foods they can buy and derive maximum benefits. Advances in mobile telephony are slated to empower the consumers to obtain important information about the products available on the super market shelves for comparison of various products and choose the best suiting to individual requirement vis-à-vis nutrition and health.

"The back story of a particular food item is valuable to consumers, too, for reasons such as managing health to being able to make moral or ethical judgments. As the Christian Science Monitor recently noted, "every gadget, piece of food, or article of clothing comes with a back story." There is already a growing movement to quantify data about the way we live - and eat. From web apps like Health Month (which enables you to set health goals and track them over a month, including dietary goals) to the self-explanatory TweetWhatYouEat. These apps will become much more sophisticated once food businesses give consumers data from the supply chain. The web site The Quantified Self, run by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, has more tips and tools for consumers who wish to track and manage the data about their lives. As a diabetic (type 1), I'm more careful than most people about what I eat. So I can't wait for the day when I'll be able to scan a food item with my smart phone and find out if it's a healthier option for me than a competing product. This is a huge opportunity for the food industry. Compete on the quality of the data you provide; and win. Let us know in the comments if you've spotted some early examples of food companies utilizing sensor or similar data".

Consumer of to day is much more worried about the safety of foods they buy and eat and digital technology is providing the required tools to monitor the history of supply chain of any product to get a feeling of confidence before buying them. It is a paradox that in spite of such powerful tools at the disposal of the industry and the consumer, there is a perceptible trend of the consumer shifting his loyalty to locally grown produce and locally made foods. While green house gas emission is certainly a factor, it may be more due to the inability of the organized commercial food producers to gain the confidence of the people because of the perception that industry does not care for consumer health, their focus being profitability "at any cost". Unless this issue is addressed no technology can come to the rescue of the industry.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

THE DIGITAL "AGE"-PRIVACY COMPROMISED?

Advent of digital technology has contributed to distinct improvements in the quality of life in many countries, especially the developed ones. Of course in this process, man's tendency to drift into a sedentary life has spawned a new problem in the form of multiple life style diseases and the cost of handling this crisis is enormous. A new dimension to this problem is the continuous erosion of privacy because of the impact of such data generated and used by many agencies on the personal lives of the denizens in the name of improving quality of life! Here is a commentary on this aspect of modern life.

"But these and other surveillance techniques are also reminders that advances in data collection are far outpacing personal data protection. Enter the post-privacy society, where we have lost track of how many entities are tracking us. Not to mention what they are doing with our personal information, how they are storing it, whom they might be selling our dossiers to and, yes, how much money they are making from them. On the way out, consumer advocates say, is that quaint old notion of informed consent, in which a company clearly notifies you of its policies and gives you the choice of whether to opt in (rather than having you opt out once you discover your behavior is being tracked)".

In the classical sense the divide between communism and capitalism revolved around person privacy which is supposed to be sacrosanct in a free society where as there is nothing that is private under communism. It is a telling commentary on the changes now taking place in the democratic world that the individual is losing his personal entity while rushing towards a super-comfortable life style. Who is to be blamed for these unconscious changes in the society and whether this is what is desirable are questions begging for an answer!

V.H.POTTY

http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com