Joe McCarthy on the practicalities, peril and promise of RFID
If you like your technology with a side of art (and simply owning an iPod isn’t enough), then you might want to catch Biznik member Joe McCarthy’s presentation this Wednesday on the future of individual identity. He and several other speakers (one of whom has a chip embedded in his body) will explore the technical, social and, yes, artistic implications of RFID. Huh? Stay with me — Joe gives us a sneak peek into the mysteries of RFID in a brief interview, below. But first the details: Wednesday’s event is presented by Dorkbot, a Seattle based group that stages a monthly meeting of “artists, designers, engineers, students and other interested parties … who are involved in the creation of electronic art (in the broadest sense of the term.)”
On WEDNESDAY, 1ST MARCH at 7:00 PM at CoCA, see the future of individual identity, with presentations and demonstrations on RFID technology. If RFID really gets under your skin, then you need to see this exciting dorkbot. We will have JOE MCCARTHY speaking on The Practicalities, Peril and Promise of RFID. Also, SCOTT DAVID will speak on the legal, social, and political issues surrounding RFID. We will also have AMAL GRAAFSTRA speaking about Embedded RFID, and doing a very exciting must-see demonstration…
OK, back to Joe, who’s got some explaining to do…
Q: So, what is RFID, and why should I care?
The most succinct definition I’ve found for radio frequency identification (RFID) is “a generic term that is used to describe a system that transmits the identity (in the form of a unique serial number) of an object or person wirelessly, using radio waves” (from RFID Journal). There will be approximately 1.3 billion RFID chips sold in 2006, and that number is expected to increase 450-fold in 10 years. Many of the current applications focus on supply chain management — tracking cases and pallets of goods from the factory to the warehouse to the retail store — but as costs decrease, they are showing up in more and more individual consumer items, such as airline baggage tags, passports and prescription bottles of Viagra. Along with the increased breadth — and depth — of applications, comes a number of privacy and security concerns: who has access of the information, how is it controlled and protected, and what kinds of laws and policies are required to ensure that this technology is used for good, or at least explicitly stated, purposes.
I’ll be saying a lot more about the range of applications during my presentation at the March 1 Dorkbot meeting; we also have an attorney, Scott David, who will be addressing some of the legal implications of the technology (and its applications), and then Amal Graafstra, who has implanted RFID chips in each of his hands, will be talking about his very personal experience of RFID, as well as entirely new dimensions of social implications.
Q: How come so many people are doing creative things with RFID now?
The costs are coming down for many of the components. High-performance readers and antennas that can detect tags from distances that range in meters are still thousands of dollars, but the most popular “passive” tags (no battery) can be purchased for under $1 each (and considerably less than that, in large quantities), and shorter range readers are available for a few hundred dollars. For the home enthusiast, a company named PhidgetsUSA offers a starter kit with three types of tags, a reader, and a circuit board, for $70. Also, the whole concept of having an environment — or things in an environment — sense and respond automagically to [other] things fires the imagination (and, in fact, has been firing imaginations for quite some time, at least in the realm of science fiction … when I tell people about our proactive display technology, I’m often asked if I’ve seen the movie “Minority Report”).
Q: Are you going to have your Proactive displays up and running at this event?
First, I’d like to offer a brief description: our proactive display application uses a large computer display to show elements from a person’s online profile when he or she is detected nearby, creating new opportunities for learning about each other and starting conversations. We associate RFID tags with online profiles and insert them into name badges, so that the displays can respond “proactively” to people’s presence by giving each person, in effect, 5 seconds of fame (or more, if people hang around the display for a while). We see our technology as bringing the best of online communities into the physical spaces we share with others.
And yes, we will have a proactive display running there, and people who will be attending the event are encouraged to create a profile beforehand at http://interrelativity.com/dorkbot. We will also have a couple of kiosk computers on-site for creating and modifying profiles. We’ve created a special “samples” page to give people a flavor for what these profiles might look like: http://interrelativity.com/dorkbot/samples.
As you know, deploying a proactive display at a Biznik event is something I’ve wanted to do — and something we’ve discussed — but the times and spaces have not been conducive thus far. Given that Biznik is about radical self-promotion, a proactive display provides an interesting (and hopefully useful) platform for that kind of activity, so I would love to have Bizniks come check it out — and provide feedback on their experiences!
Q: What is Dorkbot?
Dorkbot’s mantra is “people doing strange things with electricity.” I’ve only attended one event in the past, but it was an eye-opening experience, with an incredibly interesting group of people doing incredibly interesting things … much as I imagine what Burning Man is like.
Q: Does it cost anything to attend?
There is no charge (”free to all ages and species”), but they do accept donations, and they appreciate RSVPs (dorkbot at dorkbotsea dot org). BTW, as Interrelativity is not charging anything for this deployment, we’d appreciate it if people return their name badges – or at least their RFID tags – at the end of the event.
