I know what you will do next summer...

It's amazing when I "wake up" to a new technology/ business solution...I frown about the sleep but then hey, I wake up nevertheless...I'm currently in NY and my cousin who dabbles with RFID technology (he actually has an RFID printer, reader and countless tags in his study!) educated me on how his company (a ubiquitous tech product co) helps baby-carrot farmers to teddy-bear manufacturers tag their individual products so that down the value-chain, Walmart can track them! I wanted to examine this a little further...Walmart has been in the act since 2004 and has arm-twisted its suppliers in Texas to get going on smart-tagging their products by 2006 (along with 37 volunteers + I hear, California as well). The applications for RFID are all over - particularly in logistics but also in banking (tagging Euros to stop counterfeiting), retail (Mark and Spencers' will suggest matching ties when you buy a shirt), shrimp farming (imagine tracking a little dead shrimp all the way to the mouth of the eater - kidding!) - it's fascinating. Alien Technologies and Matrics are companies spinning the little chips that are quickly replacing barcodes. Currently their smart stickies cost $0.20/ pop and my cousin says it'll soon drop to 10 cents or lower - Economist says by 2009, it'll drop to a fraction of a cent and possibly trillions of RFIDs (literally) will be floating around. Now, will the world then really look like they potrayed in Matrix - do you want the red pill or the blue pill?