It was with some surprise that I discovered that built-in RFID chips aren’t the preserve of high-end smartphones. They’re actually more likely to be found at the bottom-end. It’s a technology that needs to be available to millions, rather than thousands, for the likes of retailers and transport companies to want to support such devices. I wrote a thing about it, which first appeared here.
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There’s not much chance that Nokia is likely to change its brand slogan — ‘Connecting People’ — any time soon. But the scope of what you do with your phone seems to widen with every passing year.
Something that’s getting the alpha-geeks very excited at the moment is the emergence of something rather unglamourously called ‘the web of things’. The idea is that, just as objects on the Internet — pages, files, pictures — all have unique addresses, so this will extend to objects in the real world. More or less anything from shirt on your back to the door of your house can and is likely to be connected to the Internet and have an address like http://you.yourstuff.yourblueshirt. At the moment, it seems most likely that these items will each have a tiny radio chip installed, called an RFID chip. The technology of getting your phone and other devices to interact with these things is called Near-Field-Communications (NFC). There’s a Nokia document explaining it here.
Why is that useful, you might wonder? Well, in the case of your shirt, it would mainly help the people that you bought it from. They could use the technology to track deliveries to individual stores. They might sell you the shirt by you tapping your phone on it. It would also make shoplifting a thing of the past, since they could identify and find items that haven’t been purchased at any point. Activating your door would be more useful to you, though. Again, you might use your phone to unlock it rather than keys. You could tell remotely who was in the house, and tell them to put the kettle on when you’re coming home. Actually, you could probably activate the kettle yourself.
Mobile phones are already very much part of the web of things. Across the world, trials are being conducted to replace tickets on public transport with a wave of your phone across the barrier. So called “smart” posters are created that reveal extra information on your mobile device with a wave. Building entry cards are similarly being replaced with identification using your mobile.
So why isn’t this already widespread? It’s a bit chicken and egg. Manufacturers won’t want to go to the extra cost of installing RFID chips until everyone’s phones support it. Phone manufacturers won’t want to create readers unless there are sufficient ‘things’ with which they can interact. It’s happening, though. Nokia already has three models with NFC, so do a number of other manufacturers. Public transport systems — where ticket machines, finding change and queues are a perpetual problem — are likely to be an early win. The Finnish city of Oulu, for example, has been running such a system for several years.
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I’m fascinated with this RFID chip. Seems to be something that could essentialy lead to a complete destruction the value Americans place in privacy. Good Blog!