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 Sunday, September 28, 2003
There's a growing amount of concern about the impact of RFID technology on privacy--you know, if you don't yank the tags, and the UPC-based tag is still on your person in the clothes or shoes or merchandise you're wrapped in, you may be leaving your unique consumer signature every time you pass by an RFID reader close enough to pick up the data. So, like as you go through the doors of any store, or through a metal detector, or through the toll booth...
Here's a great application for DARPA to look into for this: an RSS feed for every RFID tag issued, that updates every time the tag passes through another checkpoint. Want to know in near-realtime where a particular pair of sneakers has been? Subscribe to its RSS feed, and you could have its global coordinates posted to a dynamic weblog. Where's that kid off to? Enter the UPC code on his new pair of Air Jordans, and you'll not only know when he arrived at the mall, but potentially who with. Yowza!
[buzzword compliant/ dotCommunist]
10:01:45 PM 
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I had a phone conversation with my good friend Jeff Angus yesterday; he had read my Windows as Potatoes screed from Friday night, and reminded me that we had a similar conversation about monocultures and technology five years ago. He also suggested that maybe Monsanto was a better metaphor for Microsoft.
Monsanto has created a defacto monoculture through genetic engineering that gives customer a product that not only is derived from a narrow gene line, but is also sterile (so they can't cross-breed it with something else and correct any of its problems on their own) and guarantees post-sales support will come only from their licensed agents, spraying with their chemicals. Sure, it's easy to use, but as resistant strains of pests and weeds start to go after the vulnerabilities in the genetic/chemical firewall Monsanto has built, you're stuck waiting for their engineers and scientists to get a "patch" out in the next version of the product, which won't come out until next growing season at the earliest.
So is Windows the potato of the Internet age or the sorghum? Well, considering that Microsoft "eats its own dog food," maybe it is more feed-quality than for human consumption.
[buzzword-compliant]
9:53:25 PM
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