Monday, April 10, 2006

RFID, for good or for ill?

The BBC has joined the many raising the alarm over the introduction of RFID tags on the high street to track products from producer to consumer.

There has been several nightmare scenarios over the last year or so concerning the possible uses that RFID tags will be put to, although people have also been taking the technology into their own hands, in some cases quite literally...

I'm currently visiting the NOAO and as a result I'm carrying my very own RFID tag to get me in and out of the building. I'm somewhat ill at ease with RFID, despite realising the interesting possibilities they raise. After all the technology is almost mandatory to implement any sort of ubiquitous computing environment, which is where computing is heading over the next ten years.

I guess I've talked about this before, and for good or for ill, the technology to activate and read RFID tags is trivially available. Like a lot of other things the information these tags contain will be available to everyone, decide now how you want to feel about it, because you won't get any choice about whether it happens or not...

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:16 pm

    An excellent post giving an insight to the news and an excellent viewpoint. Hats off to you guys.

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  2. Like you, I'm a bit nervous about this stuff. I've posted an article you might find interesting titled, "RFID tags and the Coming New Fascism" on my blog.

    ReplyDelete