It’s official – RFID is here to stay. Sorry Katherine Albrecht

  

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If anyone really wondered whether RFID was here to stay or not, let me give you the most unequivocal proof I've seen yet that it's here to stay. Before I do, however I'd like to make a suggestion to that bastion of privacy in our public world - Katherine Albrecht and the folks over at Caspian. I suggest that she focus her effort around the mobile phone companies and the non-stop onslaught of location based products they are embedding in phones. As I tend to do with most electronic stuff, I decimated my latest crackberry and turned it in for a new one. The new one has a GPS coordinate for everything from taking pictures to dialing 911. Verizon, by default, knows where I am every moment I've got my phone in my pocket. That's technology that actually can track you, not Hollywood shoot-an-RFID-chip-in-your neck-and-track-you-from-a-helicopter fiction. So Katherine, for all those who get a new mobile phone and don't know enough to disable the GPS features and location-based programs - get after the phone companies. Shockingly, when I disabled the GPS devices in my phone I got a blue screen with the numbers 666 on it in flaming red- the mark of the beast!¹

So back to my point; what is this unequivocal proof that RFID is here to stay? Ski bums and grandmoms love the technology. For those of you who follow me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/PJSweeney) you'll know I spent this past weekend in Vail catching the last few feet of fresh powder before I headed out west to see clients. As I bought my lift ticket the woman asked me if I'd like my picture taken for an "RF card" I asked her about it and sure enough they printed up a fresh UHF Gen 2.0 card right at the counter with my smiling mug on it. I was at the Gondola not five minutes later and the gunslinging cowboy (with both hands full in the picture (below) scanned my card (underneath my jacket and back-pack) at the same time he was scanning someone next to me. Sure enough my picture popped up on his Intermec hand-held.

Time for some field work on my part. Why the two RFID readers? I asked. "I can do two lines at the same time, listening for each beep to make sure dudes have a valid RF pass. I don't have to see the ticket, just point and shoot. Sometimes I'll ask what's your name or birthday, or just look on the gun at the picture. Jokers scamming lift tickets is history, bra." Well said, I thought.

I was surprised by the near complete lack of lines on a Saturday during spring break with 18' of new powder, but the mountain is even happier about the very rapid return on investment from the elimination of stolen, fake, or borrowed passes. RFID is also part of their green initiative, folks reuse the RF cards, no more killing trees to print up stickers flapping from your zipper.

More field work. I asked a few skiers about the RFID system while riding the gondola, and I even played devil's advocate and asked about privacy concerns. People looked at me as if I was a freak. What part didn't I understand they seemed to wonder; shorter lift lines or better for the environment?

One woman went so far as to ask me if they could tell what lift her kids were last at - I told her they could if they would put up a few portals and a couple of kiosks. Another woman asked if they could put a chip in her grandson's shoes in case he got lost or abducted. While I didn't go into technical details I did come to the realization over this weekend that the convenience of RFID in the consumer market is just starting to emerge. Like the use of credit cards, the privacy aspect is far outweighed by benefit to normal everyday people.

For a couple of years now people have seen value in closed-loop business applications like IT asset tracking, returnable totes, WIP tracking, medical device tagging etc. The use of RFID in the ski area, or as Daniel Connolly wrote about in an earlier blog at a water park, is clearly evidence that the value the technology provides far outweighs the concern over privacy. With five cent tags coming out of china and companies providing consumer kits for people to build your own applications, it's only a matter of time before RFID is everywhere. I couldn't be happier, it will make the world a more efficient and more safer place. And if it means more runs per hour then I'll thank RFID for more fun too!

¹Of course I'm joking about the Mark of the Beast. Some privacy fanatics have taken the interpretation that an RFID chip is actually the mark of the beast, which, as an intelligent reader, you realize is ludicrous.