Slashdot Mirror
The Next Tech Revolution
L-Wave writes "Here is an interesting article on cincinnati.com about the next revolution in technology. "The Internet revolution was about people connecting with people. The next revolution will be about things connecting with things." The story mentions having "tags" on every possible items from glasses to grocery, and each one identifying itself on a network...very cool stuff." We've run some earlier stories about the Auto-ID Center and RFID tags. This is an important topic - it will be a huge social issue once people realize that consumer goods will come with tags that allow them to be tracked individually.
This will be great for burglars. Just drive down the street with a high-powered RF scanner and inventory every house before deciding on the one with the best stuff.
You're assuming some sort of gigantic centralized government database. But there are other possibilities.
Merchants will tag their inventory to protect themselves from theft, then log the inventory's movement on premises. Once you leave the store with it, your presence is detected by the local street safety patrol's monitors tracking you by your driver's license, until you enter your next destination, say the local pub. Inside the pub, you pay -- cash -- for a quick stimulant, with the cash register reading the embedded chip (which marks the bill as genuine with a unique serial number) and noting (courtesy of a tie-in to the IRS database which tracks all currency movement for tax assessment purpose) that you received that bill as change at the local florist's.
Next stop is a quick drive to your mother's to drop off her Mother's Day flowers, while the local security firm you pay to track the whereabouts of your late-model sportster registers your every turn.
Of course, Ma Bell also monitors your every step via your GPS-enabled cellphone so it can conveniently bombard you with advertising from whatever local business you're happening by at the moment.
I mean, it's sorta fun to think that the government/corporations/whoever really cares about me individually, and is devoting massive amounts of manpower and/or computer resources to tracking my shopping habits, but.. why would they bother?
You get the picture. No, there won't be a single centralized database monitoring every aspect of your life, but rather a myriad of local databases tracking just that portion of your activities in which it has a vested interest. Tying it all together later would require nothing more than a simple court warrant and an Internet connection. Or, I'm sure, private investigators could provide the same service for a fee.
There once was a price tag from Kmart
that had slashdot crying it was too smart
what they didn't know
was the price would be low
when you hacked the WinCE at it's heart
..and when cincinnati.com is on the cutting edge of technology you should be afraid, very afraid!
Ah, yes. Network everything. That'll solve a whole host of problems, like.......uhh... See, I always wished that my...uh......errr..
(*cough*CUECAT*cough*..)..
The whole point of invention is to solve a problem. The fact that my toaster lacks a login prompt doesn't qualify as a "problem" to anyone. I don't want a programmable heat grid in my toaster so I can burn little designs into my English muffins. I just want a friggin English muffin that isn't burnt on the outsides and soggy in the middle. Solve that first. I don't want a friggin SQL database running on my fridge. I want one that doesn't make my ice cubes smell, and no amount of TCP/IP is going to fix that. To my knowledge, there is no "Ice Cube Scent Removal" RFC.
The problem with whiz-bang ideas like this is, like the CueCat, that they don't solve any problems. Infact, they try to solve a problem that never existed in the first place. So lets suppose I have my whole apartment wired. My aquariums have webcams, my dishwasher floods both my network and my kitchen floor, and my television watches me instead of me watching it. What have I gained, other than an ego-erection? Bragging rights over my nerdy friends? Or a LAN crowded with garbage traffic, none of which will ever be used or implemented in any form other than for novely and amusement.
Put that in your socket and sniff it.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag