RFID's: Get Ready for Your Own Personal Jammer

 

Since we tend to be "big picture" kind of observers here at the Dymaxion Web, we couldn't help but be intrigued all week with the list of "supertrends" that John Mauldin presented in his most recent weekly newsletter.  The problem, we noted, at least to ourselves, is that there are more blind spots in any crystal ball we've seen than in my father's torpedo-back 1962 Mustang.  Trends, we tried to note, are a lot like covert attempts to change the world, they inherently hide reactions or blowback, as it has come to be called.  We are, it seems, students of blowback.

So, in that spirit, we mused in the DM last Monday, entitled Antidote to Disinformation, that perhaps the aging of populations in the developed world, especially insular Japan where immigration is culturally difficult, might result in a major push towards robotic systems.  The Japanese have certainly proved their ability to miniaturize electronic and mechanical systems, which after all is what robotics is all about.

Another problem with any list of "supertrends" is, of course, the prismatic effect; i.e., we reflect what we are looking at  based on pre-engineered edges and surfaces. So, Mauldin, one of the more astute observers, talked little about the disruptive impact that ever-enhanced micro-information gathering will have on business, science and society.

In order for a disruptive technology to reach its time, a whole bunch of base technologies have to be firmly in place.  In the case of micro-information, first you must have a high capacity, low cost network (the Internet), fast central processors (64-bit chips), low cost storage, ubiquitous wireless capacity and finally cheap intelligent chip manufacturing processes.

Welcome to 2004, the year of the RFID. or Radio Frequency IDentification. Whether you know it or not, you may already have a RFID in your life.  Certainly, if you drive often up and down the East Coast you have probably installed an EZ-Pass on your windshield.  If you are driving a Ford car or truck you may now have RFID's imbedded in your tires.

RFID's are tiny chips that can store information and transmit that data through built-in wireless transmission capability.  Their enormous potential to be a disruptive force lies in their tiny size (small enough to tag onto, say, a shirt label) their low cost to produce (less than a penny apiece) their data storage capacity (a magnitude greater than those striped bar codes they are replacing) and their intrinsic design that allows them to receive power from the receivers they talk to (no batteries required and so no half-lives to contend with). Like sleeper cells they only come to life when they receive an order from a master device.

Of course, if a technology doesn't have a market it might impress the Slashdot crowd but have little impact on everybody else's lives.  But this is not the case with RFID's in 2004.  Perhaps the two largest market forces in the country, the government and the consumer space are both taking giant steps into RFID's.  First, Wal-Marts has told its 100 largest suppliers that they must start attaching RFID's to items, boxes, crates, pallet-loads and containers.  The Department of Defense, has also announced that it too will start converting its supply chain to a RFID based system.

The business implications cannot be exaggerated.  With the backing of Wal-Mart and the DOD, it is only a matter of time before most car, appliance, furnishing and consumer goods will all have been tagged down to the component level.  For chip makers this will be a massive new  business. System integrators already in the supply chain management business will reap a windfall of new business as the information for these chips gets integrated into institutional logistics systems.  The crush of so much new data will reverberate back into computer and network sales that will benefit traditional IT companies like Intel, Microsoft and Cisco.

But there are even larger societal implications.  There has probably never been a greater threat to personal privacy than the influx of these devices into every corner of our lives.  When Benetton announced a couple of years ago that they were going to start using RFID's in the labels of their clothing, there was a pubic uproar aa people were made aware that somebody would be able to know, as went the old public service ad, it's 10 PM, where their socks, sweaters and underwear are.  So Benetton pulled back.  And so we can expect to hear assurances from other retailers that RFID's will be disabled, like those antitheft devices, at the point of sale.  At face value.... end of case.

But does that mean, however, that while you are in the store they won't be tracking, say, what aisles you walk up, what items you finger to check price, ingredients, what signs you stop to read, etc?  You get the picture!  After all, you probably are carrying one of their discount cards on you and its likely those cards will get their own RFID's as will your credit cards.  And the marketeers are just dying to know a little more about what you're interested in so that perhaps even by the time you get to the cash register they will have a few special offers tailored just for you. Of course, they might just invite you to opt in to that program with the promise of personally tailored specials.

But as implied by what went before.  The retail experience is only the tip of the iceberg.  Retailers can make all the assurances you want about your privacy but that will hardly be more than a proverbial finger in the dike of the information leaks that will spring from a world populated with layer upon layer of RFID's.  As we said before, RFID's may already be part of your life, little sleeper spies that can be awakened by anybody with a receiver and an understanding of their codes.  Nobody is going to want to turn off all these indicators as they come delivered in their appliances.  After all, they will have their functions, they'll tell you when a part needs to be replaced, when there is an update in firmware for your dishwater, when your coffee's cold, when you need to stop on the way home for milk, when there's a flaw in your heating and cooling system, what programs you may want to copy, etc.

RFID's are coming in both above and under the radar.  There will be huge profits and thus huge industry interests in fostering a smooth take off and flight pattern.  As we said above, predicting is a tricky business for those of us not possessing our own crystal balls but we have little doubt that, among all those things we can't imagine, they will also cause a whole new consumer technology to be born:  your own personal jammer.  Expect to see it on the "Coming Soon" menu of a wireless PDA near you.

    rmb

dymaxionweb@verizon.net

Copyright 2003 Richard Mendel-Black All Rights Reserved

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