I guess it's not hard to be wrong about internet usage. Or at least it's not hard for me. QR codes are another case in point. I've used QR codes numerous times. I've even taught how to prepare and/or use them. That doesn't change the fact that I think they're ugly, and could probably be replaced by something much more aesthetically pleasing. But in this particular example my mistake wasn't about the success of something that I thought wouldn't catch on, but about the way that the physical and the digital can interact.

QR codes have been around for a bit over twenty years, but it took smartphones to get them to truly catch on. Now they're all around us, but they're not only ugly, they're also not very interesting. The Wikipedia entry on QR codes, created eleven years ago this month, is still being updated as I prepare this column (though it seems that the page hasn't seen a significant edit in months). But almost all the references on the page are to items from 2012 or earlier. That inactivity would seem to confirm that though QR codes have become a quick and easy method of getting (digital) links to people from a (physical) space, more often than not (much more often than not) those links lead to advertisements. That's a far cry from physical/digital interaction.

Things could have been different. Ten years ago I enthusiastically examined a couple of enticing interactions - both from before smartphones. Neither of these relied on QR codes. I was hopeful then that Grafedia and [[murmur]] were ushering in a captivating genre. Both of these are still around today, but have apparently been dormant for years. Though the technology has succeeded, the spirit it seemed to embody has dissipated.