Except for Japan, 2D barcodes haven't really made it into the consumer world so far. Maybe we can jump right to the next step in the evolution with Nokia's Point & Find early prototype that does not rely on a barcode to identify something and then get some more information from the internet but instead does image recognition? Below is a video of how it works in the context of getting more information about a movie by pointing the camera phone at a movie poster.
Personally, I can also imagine to use the application for sightseeing. No more tracing through a tourist guide, just point your phone at that church, castle, monument, etc., and you get background information on it. I'd really like that.
The web page for the new application contains some further information in PDF files but doesn't go into the details of exactly how it works, like for example if a picture is taken and uploaded for analysis or if information is downloaded before and then analyzed locally).
In any case, I think there's great potential behind this, especially because individual companies can create their own Point & Find worlds. If Nokia allows some sort of billing for world downloads, I can imagine it might be an interesting application for companies working on tourist guides (to come back to my example above) to create an enhanced electronic version of their printed guides. Free point and find world downloads would be good for other purposes, like the movie industry, who could promote their movies this way in the hope users buy a ticket online or later on rather than charging for general use.