A Wider Net

This grain of pepper, according to engadget, is an RFID tag. That means that in 2-3 years we will be able to track the position of anything larger than a grain of sand. We may be able to sprinkle these things on a carpet and analyze traffic patterns by where the tags go. We can certainly address the panicked mother shouting “don’t put that in your mouth - you don’t know where it’s been!” Now, you will. You may not like the answer.

It astonishes me that we can design a microscopic tag that can help me track the location of a baseball card from the time it’s newly born from recycled egg cartons, to the time when the imprinted baseball player has a record-book rookie year and the card reaches monumental ebay value, to the time the card ends up in a flea market after the player is indicted for doping, all the way to the recycle plant where it’s turned into those hideous yellow school pads.

But we can’t drive home without a dropped cellular call. And we can’t sell bottled water (which falls from the sky every day) cheaper than gasoline (which takes hundreds of thousands of years to make from dead dinosaurs). Weird.