Friday, January 14, 2005
Welcome
OK...here is my Blog!
I have many opinions about many things. What I want to discuss and debate is the increased use of technology to record our every move. Sure, things like web cookies are innocuous enough. Over time though, as technology becomes more capable, there will be nothing that we do that cannot be recorded by some interested party. Call it paranoia. Call it whatever you like. But I refuse to stick my head in the sand and pretend that it is not happening.
I think the most important technology that is on the verge of mass acceptance is RFID tags. These are extremely small computer chips that can be integrated into any commercial product for the purpose of identifying that product. These tags are meant to be the replacement for bar codes and RF security tags. One of the many benefits of RFID tags is that you could fill up your shopping cart at Wal Mart, walk up to the cashier (through a special 'reader') and all of your purchases would already be entered into the register. Less time in line for you and more throughput for Wal Mart.
On the dark side of the equation, if all products were eventually embedded with these RFID tags, anyone with a reader (marketers, corporations, the government) could immediately know what you had in your possession at any time. This would not be limited to you walking in a store, it could even be someone in a van (with the right equipment) driving down your street. In the best case scenario, these people in the van may be compiling data on your home to determine how best to market consumer goods to you. In less innocuous scenarios, maybe these people are high tech thieves trying to determine which house is worth robbing or just maybe it is the government, armed with some convoluted data models that analyze all the stuff you have in your home to determine how much of a threat you are to the government.
Here is the kicker. RFID tags cannot be turned off. Even when you purchase something, they remain active. They have no power source and cannot be easily destroyed. Even sending them through a washing machine will not deactivate them. When 'they' start suggesting that I get implanted with one of these things if I want to buy or sell something is when I move to a very remote location and unplug!
What do you think?
Gordo
I have many opinions about many things. What I want to discuss and debate is the increased use of technology to record our every move. Sure, things like web cookies are innocuous enough. Over time though, as technology becomes more capable, there will be nothing that we do that cannot be recorded by some interested party. Call it paranoia. Call it whatever you like. But I refuse to stick my head in the sand and pretend that it is not happening.
I think the most important technology that is on the verge of mass acceptance is RFID tags. These are extremely small computer chips that can be integrated into any commercial product for the purpose of identifying that product. These tags are meant to be the replacement for bar codes and RF security tags. One of the many benefits of RFID tags is that you could fill up your shopping cart at Wal Mart, walk up to the cashier (through a special 'reader') and all of your purchases would already be entered into the register. Less time in line for you and more throughput for Wal Mart.
On the dark side of the equation, if all products were eventually embedded with these RFID tags, anyone with a reader (marketers, corporations, the government) could immediately know what you had in your possession at any time. This would not be limited to you walking in a store, it could even be someone in a van (with the right equipment) driving down your street. In the best case scenario, these people in the van may be compiling data on your home to determine how best to market consumer goods to you. In less innocuous scenarios, maybe these people are high tech thieves trying to determine which house is worth robbing or just maybe it is the government, armed with some convoluted data models that analyze all the stuff you have in your home to determine how much of a threat you are to the government.
Here is the kicker. RFID tags cannot be turned off. Even when you purchase something, they remain active. They have no power source and cannot be easily destroyed. Even sending them through a washing machine will not deactivate them. When 'they' start suggesting that I get implanted with one of these things if I want to buy or sell something is when I move to a very remote location and unplug!
What do you think?
Gordo
