It was all downhill after the Cuecat
On the origins of “user manipulation and surveillance.”
13 min readOct 20, 2022
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Sometime in 2001, I walked into a Radio Shack on San Francisco’s Market Street and asked for a Cuecat: a handheld barcode scanner that looked a bit like a cat and a bit like a sex toy. The clerk handed one over to me and I left, feeling a little giddy. I didn’t have to pay a cent.