Saturday 8 March 2008

Brave new shirt: wireless chips in our garments

Thousands of garments sold at German warehouse Galeria Kaufhof are equipped with small, almost invisible wireless chips that can be identified and traced through radio frequency. The shop that sold your garment can trace the product day and night, and because you payed with a membership card, they know who you are, and can use all data related to the travel of your nice new shirt. Brave new shirt!

RFID Technology
The chips are part of an innovative pilot project of the Metro Group. It is to be expected that the fast developing RFID technology will be implemented on much larger scale soon. Not only in your clothing, but in products, credit cards, shop gifts, etc.

The possibilities of this new technology are almost endless, for all they are a great tool for companies to know every movement of their sold items and the attached consumers. And what about a chip in the clothes of your child: you always know where they are. No kidding, this is already practice...

sources: International Herald Tribune , Wearing the future , RFID Journal , Wikipedia

upper image is showing the 'medical' usage of RIFD technology; as the image shows, the chip can be swallowed (
Technabob
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

For german speaking readers: This is the press release from Kaufhof:
http://www.galeria-kaufhof.de/sales/coco/co_presse_011_mit_070920_rfid_1.asp
They claim that customers can ask to get the tag removed when they buy the item and that they do not gather informations which could be connected to individuals. But I wonder, how many customers know the implications and the possibilities this technic offers? It really sounds as if we could be heading towards a brave new world!