By Dick Pelletier
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips will soon be used in
stores at point-of-sale checkout to replace cashiers. Sensors can
detect purchases and automatically charge your ATM or credit card – or direct you to a cash machine.
Merchants eliminate cashiers, and in our competitive world, some of
the savings gets passed on to customers in lower prices. 
Wal-Mart recently ordered 100 of its suppliers to place
RFID tags on pallets and cases. They plan
to start with inventory control, and evolve into this new
technology over the coming years. Target, Home Depot, Kroger,
Safeway, and most other stores are expected to follow soon.
This revolutionary identification system also gives merchants
more security. If a certain Beverly Hills store had installed
RFID tags, a famous actress would not
have been caught shoplifting. Sensors would have detected her
purchases as she walked out the door, and automatically charged her
credit card – no harm no foul.
RFID chips can also be implanted in
our body. Whether it’s your little one’s first day walking home
from the bus stop alone, or the millionth time she’s wandered too
far from the house, a chip under her collarbone reports her exact
location. You chart her every move. This allows her to become more
independent, and it gives you greater peace of mind.
This is not as futuristic as it sounds. Driven by 9/11, the
Department of Homeland Security, in its US-VISIT program, is
testing biometrics in a $15 billion attempt to build a “virtual
border” around the country. This high-priority project will use
facial recognition, fingerprint, hand geometry, and iris and voice
recognition in an attempt to separate bad guys from good guys.
The notion of surveillance chips installed in humans is the next
logical step to provide fool-proof identity of who we are.
VeriChip, of Palm Beach, Florida makes implants for human
identification. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip
provides information that cannot be lost, stolen, or
counterfeited.
But privacy mavens worry. Imagine if tiny traceable tags were
placed in every product or article we consumed: in our jeans and
sweaters, consumer goods, groceries, cars; even in our pets and
livestock. At a recent California Senate hearing, Senator Debra
Bowen asked: “How would you like it if your underwear was reporting
your whereabouts?”
Industry representatives say this technology is coming on fast
and cannot be stopped. By 2010, nearly all consumer products will
be tagged – revealing who purchased them, how they are being used,
and their present condition and location.
By 2015, voice-recognition techniques will enable products to
talk – from your refrigerator, you might hear “the milk is turning
sour, please replace it”. And by 2020, nearly everyone could be
“chipped” to provide genetic code identification, health
monitoring; even implants that provide electric shocks to criminals
if they become dangerous.
By 2025, interactive chips will allow you to open doors, control
appliances, and make video phone calls, with just your thoughts.
And by 2030, implants could download information direct to your
brain, enabling you to speak any language, or learn a new subject –
without studying.
Will this technology unfold so quickly? Positive futurists
believe that it will. Comments welcome.
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