In response to my increasingly turning on the TV set and being bombarded with a stream of mediocre and unknown personalities who, I presume, I am supposed to give a monkeys about; I would quite like a machine that analyses all the faces on screen, and then, using technology available to police forces around the world, matches them up against a central database of known celebrities, before displaying a discrete couple of lines of text that state
a) Who this person is, and
b) Why exactly, I should give two hoots about them.

That would release me from the trauma of trying to figure it out for myself, relaxing me enough in my sofa from my usual infuriated, fist-clenching, remote hurling fury, to a far gentler level of enragement, one altogether more conducive to the purchase of gaudy baubles as paraded about in the adverts.
-- zen_tom, Jun 09 2006

The central database could be populated by the talented and inspiring writers of He*t Magazine, and others of their ilk who choose to feed off and simultaneously support the inscestuous and self sustaining, bloated half-corpse that is the media obsession with the cult of celebrity; thus providing valuable information on Kerry Katona(whoever he is) and others, including clues as to why they might be appearing on our TV screens this week.
-- zen_tom, Jun 09 2006


Good idea Zen, a bit like The B ark - Put all those people who really give a toss about all those "Celebrities" in a big office block - and get them off the TV / streets / pubs / real offices.
-- Dub, Jun 23 2006


why do we need to recognize them? i prefer to completely ignore any gossip or rumors that have to do with celebrities, and i feel that i'm probably better for it.
-- tcarson, Jun 23 2006


I don't know why we need to recognise them - but evidently they need recognising - otherwise, what are they for? I'm suggesting we automate the process, allowing us to get on with our lives without any of the vacuous and self-perpetuating celebrity charade that we could all do without. The next step in the automated process would be to have a system that actually cares for you - reading up on celebrity gossip and chat, and showing some form of interest - to another machine that formulates and distributes said gossip and chat - eventually we might evolve purely virtual celebrities, ones that are only ever seen or heard about within the dancing bits of an immensely powerful yet curiously shallow-minded super-computer.
-- zen_tom, Jun 23 2006


then people will have become obselete in our culture, and we will be controlled by machines.
-- tcarson, Jun 23 2006


[tcarson] are you suggesting that the only thing that separates people from obsoletion is their ability to participate in celebrity gossip and chat?
-- zen_tom, Aug 15 2006


Will there be an adjustable threshold control? I think I'd need one allowing for both awareness and celebrity-ness. I'm forever seeing in-depth interviews with 'celebrities' I've never heard of - as, for example, the above-mentioned Kerry Katona (who?) - but sometimes they're with people I've heard of but have no clue who they are. However, I'm quite prepared to accept that 80% of the world's population knows every details of this person's daily life, so I'd need it calibrated to my own level of don't-give-a-toss-ness. (Or rather I would if I gave a toss.) At the same time, there are probably a lot of celebrities that even other celebrities have never heard of.

Having said which, none of this explains why the average celeb's vapid maunderings would be worthy of attention.
-- angel, Aug 15 2006


I could have used this service on the elevator where I used to work. My office used to be one floor down from Atlanta's most popular hiphop station, and I would regularly be riding the elevator with persons (and their entorages) who obviosly thought I should recognize them (and probably give up the elevator to them too). Being told that the pudgy 5'4" dweeb with the two linebackers standing behind him was known as "BiG D Head" riding up to promote his latest hit "Draggin' ma penis through treacle" could have been useful.
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Aug 16 2006


I hate that. I flew to San Francisco some years ago and got the shuttle bus to the car hire place. The bus was empty apart from me, my wife and our baby daughter on one of the bench seats opposite someone I vaguely thought looked familiar who was flanked by two fairly heavy-looking guys. Some weeks later I found out he was "Ice T".
-- hippo, Aug 16 2006


I presume that this device could be used with a camera system, rather than a television input. That way the output could be fed into a vector-based tracking system and sniper rifle...
-- Jinbish, Aug 16 2006



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