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Tech Tips Articles » RFID |
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RFID (May 1, 2005)
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Imagine the following scenario... You walk into Wal-Mart, grab a buggy and do your shopping. As you prepare to exit the store, however, you don't stand in line waiting for a cashier to ring up your purchases, nor do you reach into your wallet or purse for money or a credit card. Nope, instead you just roll your buggy right out the front door. Nobody stops you from doing this. In fact, everyone is doing the same thing. You see, as you walk out the front door, all the items in your buggy tell a computer hidden somewhere near the door that they are being purchased. Also, a little chip inside your body tells the computer who you are. By the time you go through the door your purchase is totaled and your bank account has been debited.
I certainly don't want to be an alarmist, and I don't want to cause panic thinking that this might be the Book of Revelation coming to pass. However, the above scenario could well move from the world of fiction to fact within the next 30 or so years. All because of something called RFID.
Radio Frequency IDentification, RFID, is technology that really isn't at all new but has been getting more and more notice the past few years. How it works is that items can be tagged with a small computer chip that contains information about the item to which it is attached. When this chip comes in range of an RFID receiver, it sends its signal and identifies itself. Pretty neat concept, really, when you think of how this can make things like inventory control work much faster. Currently RFID is being used to some extent by Wal-Mart and the US Dept of Defense for just that purpose. Other current uses include tracking livestock, automatically paying for toll roads without stopping and in commercial shipping pallets. There has been research into using RFID tags to help track prison inmates.
Right now, it is in very limited use and it will most certainly not become anything near as wide spread as described in the introductory paragraph for years to come. This sort of technology has some drawbacks like the potential for increased theft and mis-identified cargo, thus causing some controversy as to how, when and whether at all it should be used. If used for the right reasons, this could be a very exciting technology.
Now, for the Cool Site of the Week... This week’s site is an online version of the coolest game I've played in a long time-- Cornhole. If you've never played Cornhole, think of it as something like a ring-toss yard game mixed with Horseshoes, but about a thousand times better. As the web address is long and complicated, I've put a link to the game on my website. Just go to MikeBryant.com and click on 'Links', then 'Play Cornhole Online'. Be careful, it can be addictive.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please email me at mike@mikebryant.com.
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