How RFID, a ubiquitous but often invisible mobile technology,
identifies tens of billions of objects as they move through the world.
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is ubiquitous but often invisible,
a mobile technology used by more people more often than any flashy
smartphone app. RFID systems use radio waves to communicate identifying
information, transmitting data from a tag that carries data to a reader
that accesses the data. RFID tags can be found in credit cards,
passports, key fobs, car windshields, subway passes, consumer
electronics, tunnel walls, and even human and animal bodies--identifying
tens of billions of objects as they move through the world. In this
book, Jordan Frith looks at RFID technology and its social impact,
bringing into focus a technology that was designed not to be noticed.
RFID, with its ability to collect unique information about almost any
material object, has been hyped as the most important identification
technology since the bar code, the linchpin of the Internet of
Things--and also seen (by some evangelical Christians) as a harbinger of
the end times. Frith views RFID as an infrastructure of identification
that simultaneously functions as an infrastructure of communication. He
uses RFID to examine such larger issues as big data, privacy, and
surveillance, giving specificity to debates about societal trends.
Frith describes how RFID can monitor hand washing in hospitals, change
supply chain logistics, communicate wine vintages, and identify rescued
pets. He offers an accessible explanation of the technology, looks at
privacy concerns, and pushes back against alarmist accounts that
exaggerate RFID's capabilities. The increasingly granular practices of
identification enabled by RFID and other identification technologies,
Frith argues, have become essential to the working of contemporary
networks, reshaping the ways we use information.
