Up to date photo

Today an acquaintance of mine, who recently got his hair cut, showed me his photo id. In the photo he has a big head of hair and a large bushy beard.

Whereas nowadays, post-haircut, he is close-shaven and quite beardless, so the photo in his id now looks like a different person entirely.

In this modern electronic era, it might be interesting to have a photo ID with an automatic “Update from self”, so your photo would would always reflect your actual appearance. If you were to get a haircut, lose a little weight or dye your hair, your official photo would automatically update to reflect that.

Putting aside questions of technical feasibility, I wonder whether this would be a good thing.

3 thoughts on “Up to date photo”

  1. The other day, one of my friends speculated about something similar. Taking a picture of a notice sign (with some scribbled updates) with a cell phone, would it one day be possible for the cell phone to say ‘the object on this photo has changed, update?’

    The main thing to worry about is the defeat of the concept photo id; which is to have a verified snapshot of a person’s face, who would do the verification in case of these ‘updates from self’.

  2. The idea makes me smile, since I would need an update every four to six weeks, when I get a new hair colour. 😉 Which is probably not right, since I look quite different after a long distance flight, or early in the morning without a coffee, so the system would need an update quite often.
    The only question is, who would be interested in this? And why?
    I guess it is one of those contradictions of globalisation, that we can talk to each other, work with each other and we don’t need to care if we sit on different continents. But when it comes to travel and borders we seem to rearm. There is only one exception, the Schengen Area in good old Europe.

  3. I run the process in reverse: I keep a selfie on my phone with short hair. When I go to get a haircut, I call up the photo and say “make me look like that”.

    Some Android phones unlock by using the front camera to recognize your face. Imagine coming out of the barber shop and finding yourself locked out of your phone.

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