I think I’m becoming allergic to QR codes…
I had a dream. It was full of vertical black and white lines. Some of the lines then morphed into an odd haze of dots; some square, some circular. Some even, it appeared, were trying to dance.
Payment codes, health codes, travel codes, place codes, mini programs; depending on where you are reading this, even this silly article.
I’m gone to start telling people that if I scan a QR code my skin comes out in a rash and I start vomiting. It’s ugly.
In a classic case of “what would aliens think?”, they would deduce from our QR obsession that we are as a species barking mad.
But before our cynicism runs away with us, we would remember the part we have had to play in all of this. By “we”, well, that would be Nanjing.
The Chinese for QR code differs from the English in so far as it translates as “two-dimensional code”. That’s perhaps in recognition of the role played in the one-dimensional code by a Nanjinger.
King-Sun Fu (傅京孫) was the Chinese-American computing engineer who we should either thank or curse multiple times a day, his work having laid the foundations for today’s ubiquitous black and white miniature chessboards. While Triona Ryan discusses this in more detail elsewhere in this issue, we’re concerning ourselves here with the barcode.
Fu gainied a Bachelor of Science in 1953 from the National Taiwan University, a Master of Arts from the University of Toronto and lastly, a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The US News rankings places that institution at number 33 in the USA for 2025.
When we point our phone at a QR code, the device scans it to recognise and interpret the pattern, directing it to a place on the internet, be it a website, point on a map, Facebook page, etc. It may also just turn the QR code into a stream of text; an email address, SMS or phone number, for example.
Such pattern recognition fascinated Fu, to the degree that it would make him one of the key founders of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), for which he served as its first president.
In his honour of the memory of Professor Fu and beginning in 1988, the IAPR awards on a biennial basis the King-Sun Fu Prize in Fu’s memory and in recognition of an outstanding technical contribution in the field of pattern recognition.
In 1978, Fu also served as the first Editor-in-Chief of the flagship journal in the field of artificial intelligence that is Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI). As an author, from the late 1960s right up until just a few years before his death, Fu wrote a number of academic publications on the subject of pattern recognition.
Bar codes, such as those on almost any product you buy, were one of the innovations brought about by the field of Computer Image Analysis, the quantitive characterisation of 2 or 3D images.
Those barcodes led to the QR codes that dominate every facet of life in today’s China, and increasingly, the rest of the world. Think of Fu the next time you scan. He passed away on 29 April, 1985, aged just 54.
But now, almost 40 years later, a new innovation has ridden into town. And despite its best intentions to weans us off our QR addictions, it’s one which asks us to treat it as we would drive a dodgem or use a messaging app to address someone known for irresponsiveness.
Alipay’s new device resembles a scanner from Star Trek. Yes, that’s right; some 70 years of technological progress has given us this, the rear of which, when you pick it up, looks like something with which you would de-ice your car.
And it’s a dodgem because it asks us “to bump” it. Or at least that’s the Chinese for the verb; “Peng” (碰). By bump, it means place one’s phone against the device for payment to be made; no password code or face required. This is Apple Pay, Chinese style.
But Alipay likely had little other alternative since use of the verb “to scan” (“sao”; 扫) had reached saturation point about a decade ago. It was also further revelation as to the inadequacy of Chinese vocabulary, renown for its lack of specificity.
For while we may scan a code, the same Chinese verb is used to mop the floor. And while we may bump the new gizmo to complete a payment, we might also employ the same vocab to not-so-subtly hint to a friend that someone is admiring them from afar.
Wipe, mop, brush; and now bump, touch, nudge.
And when you’re done, the scanner kindly reminds, “Bump payment successful”. My allergy may have been successfully addressed thanks to near-field communications, but what would those aliens think?
And the kicker is… Alipay’s Star Trek device also accepts using WeChat. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Tencent.