In fact, more elaborate RFID systems such as car tags that let you zoom through toll booths seem beneficial, although if there were no toll booths, this convenience would not need to exist. RFID tags are used at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, to enhance the visitor's experience, and I can see some potential in this sort of closed environment. But last February, around the time this feature was introduced, there was a brouhaha over the use of similar RFID tracking devices in a Sutter County, California, school district. A news item in the San Francisco Chronicle had this telling report:

"Tatro said when her 13-year-old daughter came home from the first day of school in January, when the students began wearing the tags, she had waved the tag in her fist and said, 'Look at this. I'm a grocery item. I'm a piece of meat. I'm an orange.'"

Their daughter was threatened with disciplinary action if she did not participate in the program, according to a letter sent by the district.

Although the board said nothing in response to parental complaints, several attendees defended the system, saying it would keep kids in school, free up more time for teachers to teach, and increase security for pupils and teachers."

Exactly how this sort of monitoring would give teachers "more time to teach" is baffling, but this is the sort of rationale you come across when the laundry list of excuses appears. What was funny to me was the response by certain teachers who seem befuddled by the fact people were objecting to being tagged like cows in the slaughterhouse.

So if you read this column carefully you'll find that the thrust behind RFID stems from laziness. Total control of the public is an afterthought that will follow naturally. Right now it's laziness. Identity theft comes from institutional laziness. We're going to fix it on the cheap with RFID? Students roam all over the place because today's schools—which often look like factories or minimum security prisons—are impersonal. Nobody can keep an eye on the children, so track them! Laziness is the overriding theme. Even the refrigerator use: Too lazy to open the damn door! Geez.

Welcome to the 21st century. It's just starting. Take a seat.

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