RFID and DoCoMo and Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451°

Thanks Bernice and Peter for your posts on chips.

Here's a pastiche of highlights cut from the linked articles in Peter's and Bernice's posts with comments.

From the Reuters article on the DoCoMo Phone cited by Bernice:

Pastiche:"The Japanese company DoCoMo has developed mobile phone prototype which uses a sensor made by start-up Kaiser Technology Co. that can send electric signals through the human body to transmit data, enabling electronic payments or data transfer at the touch of a finger. Here's a sample application: Doors to secure areas would open as your phone transmits your ID code through your feet, or you can get in a car and have the car instantly adjust the seat and steering wheel to the perfect angle, said DoCoMo spokesman Takushi Koinumaru."

How do I feel about the possibilities? At the present time, I have two replies. If I am feeling curious: "Very interesting, but no thank you." If I am feeling threatened by its dark side, " No way in hell!" In the future when this technology may become run of the mill, I will most likely feel very differently. Also, our tech societies may evolve to the point where one has no choice but to pay bills via a chip in their body. Because it is so strange to us today it is frightening. In 10 -15 years , it may seem strange no to do so. Yet today I remain uncomfortable at having a device in me that can track me at all times.

From the link Peter posted, Lev Grossman discusses both the Orwellian and benign possibilities of the RFID chip. This quote on a more benign implementation of the technology really shows how human interaction may be dramatically altered by the new possibilities. I find the possibilities described by this excerpt really kookie:

"The cheaper RFID tags get, the more ubiquitous they'll become. But personally I envision a slightly more benign future, one in which the trend of human-implantable RFID tags merges with the online social-networking craze. What if all the information in your Facebook profile were tucked snugly into a tiny RFID-like chip embedded, say, in the ball of your thumb? Your RFID-enabled cell phone could beep every time you walked past somebody two degrees of separation or less from you or who had the same favorite novel you do or who liked to play Scrabble and wasn't doing anything later. Nightmare or utopia? You decide."

The key word here is ubiquitous. It would need to be so for us to become blasé about it. But this said, the enduring questions of privacy will probably be fiercely fought over the implementation of this technology. I would imagine people could control when they choose to emit their signal or one would hope to have that level of control on settings. Still a bit scary..

Here's another quote from the other article Bernice posted:

"A new poll shows that nearly 1 in 4 Americans say the Internet could be a stand-in for a significant other for a period of time. Among singles, the percentage was even higher: 31 percent. (One wonders how popular such responses as "reading a good book" or "playing with my cats" were to the question of substitutes.)"

Today, I heard a great discussion of Ray Bradbury's futuristic novel Fahrenheit 451°. Although published 50 years ago in reaction to the advent of television, he anticipated many aspects of our modern day society. One of the scary aspects of modern life he anticipated is the very phenomenon mentioned in the quote above: people will become so engaged with media/technology that they will forgo actual human companionship. How prescient Bradbury was in anticipating media's hold on our society!

As far this phenomenon, NO THANKS!!! While I marvel at technology, nothing replaces sitting down face to face and talking to a real live human being. NOTHING!!!! So I need not worry about falling under this zany spell.

Thanks for letting me mull over these issues.
And who knows,
your perhaps future gong-ho advocate of implanted chip enabled capacities,
Laura