Tumblroth

Yesterday I was up at the GE Global Research center in Niskayuna, NY. The town is just outside of Albany, though until the day before I drove up there, I would have figured it was closer to Kyoto. I got a whirlwind tour of the center, moving from one linoleum-floored lab to another. One of the most intriguing inventions, I thought, was an attempt to marry security cameras with gaze-recognition software, which means that as you’re scanning the shelves of a 7/11, a camera is tracking exactly what and how long you’re looking at each item. Used in bulk, this would threaten the jobs of budding Paco Underhills.

But what I thought was really wild was that GE scientists thought of this as synergy in the making. The inventors said they offered it to NBC (a GE unit) as a way to give some added value to companies buying commercial time on the network. Sort of, “Buy 30 seconds in America’s Got Talent and we’ll throw in this free gizmo for spying on your customers.”  Analysts are always complaining that NBC doesn’t have a place at GE. Clearly they just need to spend some more time in Niskayuna. (One bit of advice if they do head up there: avoid the tuscan sandwich in the cafeteria. Bad news.)