A ubiquitous society
From January through March 2007, a number of streets in the luxurious shopping quarters of Ginza in central Tokyo were plastered with thousands of RFID chips. People with a special PDA-like device could access all kinds of information by way of communicating with those chips. Where is that cute second-hand bookstore again that I can never find? Does my favourite restaurant have a nice menu today? What’s the story behind that beautiful statue in the square?
Japan, under the guiding hand of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), is trying hard to create a ubiquitous society. That is, an environment in which anyone can access all kinds of information at any time, anywhere. Click here for the vision of the MIC. Do click! It’s quite entertaining.
RFID technology is projected to play a leading role in the realisation of this ubiquitous vision. Compared to the RFID passes for public transport, this case is interesting since it turns the table in terms of who controls the information. With Pasmo and Suica, we hold the tags. And in doing so, every time we pass a reader we add some data to the big databases maintained by the public transport providers. In the case of ubiquitous networks, the tags are placed in the landscape and we carry around the reader. So potentially (but this is largely dependant on the configuration of the network) we are the ones building a database of information to our liking, while passing through life relatively anonymously.
In the Ginza case however, it is quite likely that a central database logs your movement all the same. The chips embedded in the landscape only emit a code. The handheld, upon receiving the code, subsequently connects to the internet to download the data corresponding to that code. It seems likely that all communications between tags, readers and the information database will be filed. We are very curious to find out more about this project and others like it. Who controls the databases of user movements? And what are they used for? To whom will access be granted? Will the police demand access to track down (potential) wrongdoers? Will access be sold to the highest bidder for marketing purposes?
Interesting stuff, huh? I knew you’d like it.
April 17, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Yes! Those questions are exactly what I was refering to!Kind of creepy if a database knows about all your movements, when you phone, where you go, what you buy at what time, even when you stay at home. So, where will the rebellion come from?