Bugs on the Deodorant - is it RFID?

Now, at last, our garbage can have readable low frequencies. As RFID
tags become more and more part of our daily consumer environment, we
will have fruit tags that are pesky in new ways: not only sticky but
also emitty. Looks like we will soon have readable fruit, and veg, and
meat - all with tags on the packaging or on the produce itself.
Inventory tracking and management systems are becoming an extraordinary
science-fiction-like reality, where all products are emitting
frequencies that can be read by readers, and cellphones with reader
software.

I started looking at it when the NYTimes had a feature on the new
codes that will soon replace barcodes. They showed a billboard in Korea
that had only an abstract digital binary pattern, a square with black
and white patterns in it. It looked like meaningful information of some
sort, coded. This can be read by a cellphone. It reminded me of some of
James’ paintings.

Then this morning I saw one: like a bug, it was beside the barcode on my deodorant.

I’ve just passively accepted barcodes, as we all have. “Oh that’s
just how they keep track of things.” Efficient, computer-based
inventory control, right?

So I went to the web to see what I could find on RFID, the closest
thing to these little bugs, and have been avidly reading up on it most
of the morning. What does it mean? I can’t really say, but socially it
is a tighter integration of human needs (and the fulfillment of those
needs) with consumer culture and computer tracking on a highly
sophisticated level. And it looks like it is now mainstream.

Now I don’t believe my deodorant is tracking me, it seems to be just
an inert print tag, and may not be emitting anything at this stage. But
we know that sophisticated printers can print all kinds of nanochips.
Still, a black and white binary image can be scanned like a barcode,
rather than having an expensive (say $.40 minimum cost) RFID that emits.

This system will reach consumers soon, and the critical mass will
mean $.05 per tag, and that will mean greater ubiquity. Stuck on the
outside plastic, these tags will be torn off and tossed in the trash. I
can imagine garbage emitting low level radio frequencies - sounding
like a true mashup, compared with the ordered emissions of the produce
department, with all the apples singing one tone, and all the bananas
singing another. The wrapped meats provide the lower tones, while all
the packaged cereals are singing harmonies. Meanwhile the carts in the
supermarket are providing percussion - they can’t be removed from the
store. And the electronic doors open and close. It is a nightmare
Jacques Tati film, as the hapless M.Hulot shakes the lemon and holds it
to his ear, before dropping it as it rolls beneath the wheels of a
programmed cart. To scream?

Stopping these emissions is called killing the tag. Until the tag is
killed it is alive, sending out its signals. Mystics have always said
that every object emits vibrations that are visible and audible to the
one who can sense these subtleties. Now we are creating a world in
which our objects emulate this process. But what does the artificial
vibration do to the subtle vibration that is already there?

The technology has been in use for over 5 years now, and is now
becoming ubiquitous. Hospitals use it to keep track of who’s who and
which charts and tests go together. Fast reading of intensely
compressed and coded information, tracked and coordinated. Life as a
smooth machine, society as an integrated circuit.

Are we happy yet?

(I thought I was buying and using deodorant, but it now seems like it has been buying and using me.)