I wonder if the line “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?”
from the famous Simon and Garfunkel song,
“Mrs. Robinson,” will have any meaning for future
generations. Not because they won’t understand the
context of the song or even know who Joe DiMaggio is, but
because not knowing where someone has gone might be a concept
that is totally foreign to them.
I just finished reading an article called “Microchips Everywhere:
A Future Vision” by Todd Lewan of the Associated
Press. I came upon the story innocently enough, browsing
technology news items on my cell phone via
Verizon’s VZW Today Web 2.0 service.
The thrust of the article is the effect RFID
chips will have on our lives in the future.
Lewan begins his piece with “Microchips
with antennas will be embedded in virtually
everything you buy, wear, drive and read,
allowing retailers and law enforcement to
track consumer items and, by extension, consumers
wherever they go, from a distance.”
The article goes on to punctuate this point
with a variety of ways RFID technologies are
used today and will be used tomorrow—all of
which somehow keep track of where you’ve
been and what you’ve done.
Tracking You And Your Pets
One RFID device that’s been around for
many years, known as EZ-Pass in the New
York/New Jersey area where I live and work,
makes paying tolls very simple. Ten cars can
pass through a toll in the same time as a car
whose driver doesn’t have exact change.
But when you receive your EZ-Pass statement
at the end of the month, it’s patently
obvious that someone knows that you’ve
passed through one or more tolls on your way to work or wherever
on a particular day.
Dogs and other animals have had RFID tags embedded
under their skin for quite some time. My neighbor’s dog Sam,
a Wheaton Terrier, has one. It’s not meant to track his every
move, although it might some day. But it is useful for identifying
him among all of his lookalike brethren.
One day when he escaped from his yard, it became clear
after several hours that his disappearance was no ordinary
romp around the neighborhood and a return home. After day
had turned to night, I felt compelled to drive around the neighborhood
to help my distraught neighbor.
I found Sam lying in the far corner of a fenced-in yard about
two blocks away, but I couldn’t make a positive ID. Was this
really Sam? Luckily, all I had to do was look at the name tag
that was still around his neck. I didn’t have to locate an RFID
reader to make certain it was him.
Iinstant Location on Tap
But RFID tags aren’t the only electronic devices tracking
things nowadays. Lots of gadgets do the same. Cell phones and
GPS systems can track a person’s physical location, while home
and office PCs can track their users’ movements
through cyberspace.
A new company called Air Semiconductor
(www.air-semi.com) from Swindon in the
U.K. recently announced a technology that
will allow lots of other electronic gadgets,
such as digital cameras, to start tracking, too.
Air’s technology continuously tracks a user’s
location. Consequently, it also can provide
instant location updates.
The technology is embodied in the Airwave-
1 chip, which brings instant and continuous
location technology to portable
devices (see the figure). The initial target for
the chip is digital cameras, which will be able
to automatically geotag images, just the way
photos get tagged with a date and time information
today.
The company’s proprietary technology utilizes
signals from GPS satellites in an innovative
way that eliminates the “time-to-firstfix”
of conventional GPS receivers, which
can be several minutes. It also maintains a
constant watch on its location but can almost
instantly focus to offer a pinpoint fix. This
novel operation provides continuous location
tracking and also eliminates the time-to-first-fix.
The key to the Airwave-1 is that it requires as little as 1% of
the power required by current GPS solutions, consuming just
1 mA when continuously tracking. Besides digital cameras,
mobile handsets will be able to run a new generation of autonomous
location-sensitive applications. The company expects to
release samples of the Airwave-1 this summer and be ready for
mass production in 2009.
Where have you gone? Just check your EZ-Pass records, cell
phone, digital photos, and anything else you can think of. “We
know exactly where you’ve gone” will probably be a better line
as these technologies become more pervasive in the future.