Brave New World of RFID
If you thought barcode's were cool technology, wait until you see RFID. Radio Frequency Identification to give it its full name, is a technology that allows digital data encoded in an RFID tag is gathered by a reader using the radio waves and then passes it onto the computer system for processing. The tag does a similar job to a barcode, only so much better.
There was an advertisement on TV a few months ago. A man walks into a supermarket, stuffs a range of goods into his pockets and brazenly walks out the door. The security guard catches up with him and presents his till receipt that he had forgotten. In the world of RFID all the goods would have transmitted their price data to the automatic checkout. The man’s credit card would have transmitted his details wirelessly and the whole transaction would have taken place without human interaction. That is just one scenario in the brave new world of RFID.
It is a technology that is working today. Not quite as seamlessly as the
advert above suggests. But it is heading that way. Stora
Enso is one company betting that RFID technology will take off in the near future.