Speaker 1: Imagine knowing the exact journey of every single product you buy,
Speaker 1: I mean, from its origin through every step all the
Speaker 1: way into your hands. Yeah, or maybe picture this a
Speaker 1: crucial airplane part. They can literally tell you its life story,
Speaker 1: confirming it's never been exposed to extreme conditions over decades
Speaker 1: of service. It sounds like a pretty fundamental shift in
Speaker 1: how we understand the physical world, right, it really does.
Speaker 1: Today we're doing a deep dive into the technology that's
Speaker 1: well quietly making these scenarios a reality. Radio frequency identification
Speaker 1: or RFID. That's right, it's revolutionizing how we track and
Speaker 1: understand the physical world around us, often without us even
Speaker 1: realizing it.
Speaker 2: And our mission here in this deep dive is really
Speaker 2: to pull out the core insights, maybe some surprising facts,
Speaker 2: and definitely the critical challenges from a key text RFID
Speaker 2: technology and applications, which came out back in two thousand and.
Speaker 1: Eight, right, two thousand and eight. So it's a snapshot
Speaker 1: in time exactly.
Speaker 2: We want to give you a really solid understanding of
Speaker 2: rfid's foundations and it's huge potential as people saw it then,
Speaker 2: always keeping in mind of course that this technology, this
Speaker 2: foundational tech, it's kept evolving right up to today.
Speaker 1: It's a great baseline, though, a fascinating snapshot, like you said,
Speaker 1: of a technology just on the cusp of well, massive
Speaker 1: growth purcisely. So, Okay, when we talk about RFID now,
Speaker 1: it sort of feels like it just popped up everywhere,
Speaker 1: enabling all this incredible stuff. But how far back does
Speaker 1: it actually go? Was it, you know, a sudden breakthrough
Speaker 1: or did it have a longer, maybe more winding path
Speaker 1: to get where it was in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: That's a great question actually, because the roots go surprisingly deep.
Speaker 2: I mean we're talking nearly one hundred and fifty years
Speaker 2: before source text was published.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tracing all the way back to James Clerk Maxwell's
Speaker 2: groundbreaking work on electromagnetic waves. Okay, then you fast forward
Speaker 2: to the practical beginnings and you find it really emerging
Speaker 2: during World War Two with systems called identification friend or
Speaker 2: foe IFF systems.
Speaker 1: Right, I've heard of those.
Speaker 2: Even more sort of everyday connection. Think about those electronic
Speaker 2: article surveillance, the eas anti theft systems, the gates and shops.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the ones at BEEP if you walk out
Speaker 1: with something from.
Speaker 2: The seventies exactly, those back in the nineteen seventies. Those
Speaker 2: were a really clear early precursor to modern RFID.
Speaker 1: That's quite a journey, then, from wartime tech to shoplifting prevention.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a natural evolution maybe from things we
Speaker 1: already had. How much did RFID build on, say, barcode technology,
Speaker 1: we were all familiar with that. What was the big leap?
Speaker 2: Oh? It absolutely built on that foundation. Our RFID didn't
Speaker 2: just appear from nowhere. It took the principles of automated
Speaker 2: data capture ADC that were established by barcode.
Speaker 1: Standards like the supermarket checkout ones.
Speaker 2: Exactly like the Universal Product code the UPC developed for
Speaker 2: the grocery industry back in the mid seventies, and it
Speaker 2: supercharged them. Those barcodes were instrumental really in optimizing supply
Speaker 2: chains for big retailers like Walmart. Sure, but they had
Speaker 2: that critical limitation. You needed a clear line of site.
Speaker 2: You had to physically scan.
Speaker 1: The barcode right point the scanner right at it.
Speaker 2: The fundamental advantage the big leap RFID brought was enabling
Speaker 2: non line of site data capture. It uses radio frequencies
Speaker 2: to read electronic product codes EPCs on tags without needing
Speaker 2: that direct visual scan That fundamentally changed how items could
Speaker 2: be identified, you know, in bulk or without someone needing
Speaker 2: to handle each one.
Speaker 1: That non line of site. Bit it still feels a
Speaker 1: bit like magic. And speaking of the tags, you know,
Speaker 1: for our listeners who might have seen RFID in different places,
Speaker 1: there are a few main types. Let's just quickly clarify
Speaker 1: the basic differences. How did these little tags actually power
Speaker 1: up and you know talk to a reader?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really boils down to how they get their energy.
Speaker 2: So first up, you have passive RFID tags. These are
Speaker 2: well pretty fascinating because they have no internal power source.
Speaker 1: At all, none none.
Speaker 2: Instead, they actually convert energy directly from the reader's signal.
Speaker 2: It essentially wakes some up up and then they communicate
Speaker 2: back using a process called backscatter. Backscatter, Yeah, think of
Speaker 2: it like the tag subtly reflecting back a tiny part
Speaker 2: of the reader's own signal, almost like an echo, but
Speaker 2: encoded with its data, all without needing its own power.
Speaker 2: Then you have active RFID tags. They're quite different. They
Speaker 2: actually contain their own battery, which naturally allows for much
Speaker 2: longer read ranges and potentially more functionality like sensors. And
Speaker 2: then sort of bridging the gap. You have semi passive tags.
Speaker 2: They have a battery, but it's mainly to power internal
Speaker 2: circuits like sensors. They still communicate passively using that backscatter method.
Speaker 1: Got it. So it's kind of like the difference between say,
Speaker 1: a solar powered calculator just needing light and a battery
Speaker 1: powered remote that needs its own juice.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty good analogy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, that makes sense. Now. I know wireless signals
Speaker 1: operate on different frequencies and that usually affects how they behave.
Speaker 1: What are the main operating frequencies for RFID and how
Speaker 1: does that really impact how the tech works in the
Speaker 1: real world.
Speaker 2: Standing the frequencies is definitely key to grasping the applications.
Speaker 2: We mainly talk about two big bands. First, UAHF or
Speaker 2: ultra high frequency UHF.
Speaker 1: Think of this as the long range scout of RFID.
Speaker 1: It operates typically between eight hundred sixty and nine hundred
Speaker 1: sixty meigaherts. It's good for longer read ranges several feet
Speaker 1: sometimes even meters wow meters, Yeah, which makes it ideal
Speaker 1: for scanning lots of items across a big space like
Speaker 1: a whole palette. On a loading dock or tracking boxes
Speaker 1: zipping along a conveyor belt. In contrast, you have HF
Speaker 1: or high frequency. This operates at thirteen point five to
Speaker 1: six megaherts and it works almost called a near field mode.
Speaker 1: Near field yeah, I think really close range interaction often
Speaker 1: just inches. It's similar to how your contactless payment card works.
Speaker 1: You have to tap it or get it very close
Speaker 1: to the reader.
Speaker 2: Okay, like NFC on phones, exactly.
Speaker 1: Like that principle. The advantage here though, is that HF
Speaker 1: is generally much more robust when you're trying to read
Speaker 1: through tricky materials like liquids or meta UHF struggles more
Speaker 1: with those, right. But a significant challenge, especially back then,
Speaker 1: for global adoption was getting worldwide interoperability. Different countries have
Speaker 1: different rules for radio.
Speaker 2: Frequencies, always the way with wireless tech totally. For instance,
Speaker 2: Europe has listened before talk rules in some bands, you know,
Speaker 2: to avoid interference, and certain frequencies are just licensed for
Speaker 2: totally different things in many Asian countries, so you couldn't
Speaker 2: use them for RFID.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, crossing borders is always complex. Now,
Speaker 1: despite all that cleverness in the different frequencies, it feels
Speaker 1: like engineering is never simple. What were some of the
Speaker 1: maybe quirky or persistent technical challenges Artfi d engineers were
Speaker 1: wrestling with when this book came out. I think I
Speaker 1: read something about a Swiss Cheese effect.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, you're absolutely right. The Swiss Cheese effect is. Well,
Speaker 2: it's a real headache. Imagine trying to get a radio
Speaker 2: signal through an invisible, constantly shifting landscape. That's kind of
Speaker 2: what happens. Yeah, so out of phase radio signals can
Speaker 2: cancel each other out, creating these spots in the environment
Speaker 2: basically areas with not enough energy for the tags to
Speaker 2: even power up and respond, like holes in Swiss cheese
Speaker 2: where the signal just doesn't reach. It's incredibly frustrating to
Speaker 2: design systems around that. And it wasn't just that. You
Speaker 2: could also get things like ghost tags basically false reads
Speaker 2: where the reader thinks a tag is there when it isn't,
Speaker 2: and just general interference from things like metal surfaces, water,
Speaker 2: or even other sources of electromagnetic energy in the area.
Speaker 1: That Swiss Cheese effect. It sounds a bit like when
Speaker 1: you're trying to find that one perfect spot for your
Speaker 1: Wi Fi router at home and they're just these weird
Speaker 1: dead zones for no reason exactly.
Speaker 2: It's a very similar kind of radio wave physics problem.
Speaker 1: So with all these you know, inherent quirks, what kind
Speaker 1: of clever solutions did engineers and researchers come up with?
Speaker 1: How did they overcome these physical limits and actually get
Speaker 1: this technology working reliably?
Speaker 2: Well, it really did call for some innovative thinking to
Speaker 2: improve read rates, getting more tags read successfully, and also
Speaker 2: the singulating speed.
Speaker 1: Regulating speed, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Basically the number of individual tags a reader can identify
Speaker 2: per second. To improve both, engineers develop clever anti collision algorithms.
Speaker 2: Think of them like really efficient traffic controllers for the tags.
Speaker 2: They manage how tags respond, so hundreds, maybe even thousands
Speaker 2: can talk to the reader in quick succession without just
Speaker 2: creating a jam of signals.
Speaker 1: It stops them all shouting at.
Speaker 2: Once, precisely. And a simpler but sometimes remarkably effective strategy
Speaker 2: is just keeping either the tags or the readers in
Speaker 2: motion during a read.
Speaker 1: Just moving them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that movement helps tag cycle in and out of
Speaker 2: any potential null spots, increasing the chance they'll be read.
Speaker 1: Huh. Sometimes the simple.
Speaker 2: Things right, And to maximize a passive tags read range
Speaker 2: how far away it can be read. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of focus on optimizing the chip's power consumption, using
Speaker 2: things like low voltage circuits and intelligent power management on
Speaker 2: the chip.
Speaker 1: Itself, squeezing every bit of energy out of that reader's
Speaker 1: signal exactly.
Speaker 2: And for those challenging materials like liquids and metals, while
Speaker 2: sometimes the strategy was just to tag the container instead
Speaker 2: of the liquid product directly, or even using those near
Speaker 2: field UHF approaches which behave a bit more like HF
Speaker 2: at close range and can work better near metal and liquids.
Speaker 2: But an ongoing problem highlighting the book was the lack
Speaker 2: of really good integrated location technology in the mobile readers.
Speaker 2: Back then, you could tell what was nearby, but pinpointing
Speaker 2: exactly where an item was could still be difficult.
Speaker 1: Uh the finding this specific box.
Speaker 2: Problem right, And also for fixed reader installations like portals
Speaker 2: over doorways, the installation costs themselves wiring mounting configuration could
Speaker 2: sometimes be prohibitively high, even rivaling the cost of the
Speaker 2: actual reader hardware.
Speaker 1: Right, it's not just the tech, it's putting it in place. O. Wait,
Speaker 1: it sounds like engineers really push the boundaries to get
Speaker 1: this working in tough spots. So where did we actually
Speaker 1: see the payoff beyond just basic track? What were some
Speaker 1: of the most maybe surprising ways RFID was being used
Speaker 1: when this text came out, really changing how industries worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where it gets really interesting beyond just
Speaker 2: counting boxes. Let's start with the kind of foundational applications
Speaker 2: in the retail supply chain. Walmart, for example, launched a
Speaker 2: huge initiative pushing for palette and partent tagging using UHF,
Speaker 2: especially in the fast moving consumer goods sector, things like groceries, toiletries.
Speaker 1: The everyday stuff exactly.
Speaker 2: And the key insight from their early adoption wasn't just oh,
Speaker 2: we have better inventory counts. It was a powerful demonstration
Speaker 2: that RFID could fundamentally improve supply chain efficiency. They reported
Speaker 2: something like a thirty percent reduction in.
Speaker 1: Out of stocks thirty percent. That's huge.
Speaker 2: It is huge just by improving their shelf stocking processes
Speaker 2: because they knew it was in the back room, and
Speaker 2: also a ten percent reduction in unnecessary manual orders. Jillette
Speaker 2: also reported a specific success, a nineteen percent increase in
Speaker 2: sales during promotions, which they attributed directly to using ours
Speaker 2: for better stock visibility.
Speaker 1: So real tangible benefits.
Speaker 2: Absolutely tangible ROI at scale, but retail still face challenges definitely.
Speaker 2: A big one was the cost of item level tagging,
Speaker 2: putting a tag on every single item. Back then it
Speaker 2: was maybe around ten cents per RFID tag compared to
Speaker 2: maybe zero point one sense for a simple barcode.
Speaker 1: Big difference when you're selling millions of items.
Speaker 2: Massive difference. And another funny issue was interference with metal
Speaker 2: detecting machines used in packing processes because of the small
Speaker 2: bits of metal in the RFID tags.
Speaker 1: Themselves, unexpected consequences.
Speaker 2: Right now, beyond retail, RFID was offering really unique, sometimes
Speaker 2: critical solutions in more specialized, high impact areas. Take healthcare and.
Speaker 1: The cold chain, okay, pharma and things like that exactly.
Speaker 2: It played a vital role in pharmaceuticals, partly driven by
Speaker 2: FDA mandates for things like pedigree tracking for consumer drug sales.
Speaker 2: This was really crucial for fighting the massive like thirty
Speaker 2: two billion dollar counterfeit drug industry.
Speaker 1: Wow, thirty two huge problem.
Speaker 2: And then there's a cold chain that's all about maintaining
Speaker 2: precise temperature ranges for perishable goods. Especially things like vaccines.
Speaker 1: Critical for vaccine, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Critical, because even slight temperature deviations can just render them ineffective.
Speaker 2: The book gives an example. A polio vaccine could lose
Speaker 2: half its activity in just one day if it gets
Speaker 2: up to forty one degree C, which is about one
Speaker 2: hundred and six fahrenheit, so HF semi active tags. Those
Speaker 2: battery assisted ones showed real success in wireless temperature monitoring
Speaker 2: for this. They proved effective even reading through liquids, and
Speaker 2: even gained FAA approval for use on commercial aircraft.
Speaker 1: That's impressive, But that cold chain example, it makes me
Speaker 1: think it raises a key question for you, the listener. Right,
Speaker 1: if the RFID tag is on the outside of a
Speaker 1: big insulated shipping container, how can you be absolutely sure
Speaker 1: it's reflecting the real temperature deep inside where the product
Speaker 1: actually is, not just the air near.
Speaker 2: The sensor That is the million dollar question.
Speaker 1: Might end up projecting a perfectly good shipment based on
Speaker 1: an external reading exactly.
Speaker 2: That challenge of knowing the true state of the item,
Speaker 2: not just the tag's environment, was definitely a recognized issue.
Speaker 2: It's about getting that precise measurement right.
Speaker 1: Okay, what other industries well, in.
Speaker 2: The aerospace industry there was the Aeroid program. This was
Speaker 2: a big collaborative effort Boeing, Airbus, Embrere, all the major players.
Speaker 2: It really highlighted rfid's unique value for them. They deal
Speaker 2: with very high value, incredibly long life cycle aircraft parts,
Speaker 2: often operating in extreme condition.
Speaker 1: Yeah decades of service right.
Speaker 2: RFID enabled vastly improved track and trace for these parts,
Speaker 2: ensuring their authenticity, their airworthiness, that they have the correct
Speaker 2: maintenance history logged over maybe thirty or forty years, and
Speaker 2: it integrated with existing standards they already used.
Speaker 1: Makes sense for something so critical and expensive.
Speaker 2: Definitely. Now, for anti counterfeiting more broadly, beyond just drugs,
Speaker 2: RFID offered a really powerful tool where frankly old or
Speaker 2: security features like holograms had often failed or been copied.
Speaker 2: The core insight here is that RFID can create a
Speaker 2: unique digital fingerprint for a physical item that's much harder
Speaker 2: to replicate convincingly. It aims to stop various attack scenarios
Speaker 2: like tag cloning just copying a tag's ID making fikes exactly,
Speaker 2: or tag emission just ripping the tag off, or even
Speaker 2: removal reapplication taking a genuine tag off a real product
Speaker 2: and sticking it onto a counterfeit one very so. RSID
Speaker 2: countermeasures included using unique read only tag IDs that couldn't
Speaker 2: be easily changed, performing plausibility checks like does this tag's
Speaker 2: purported location history make sense based on where it should
Speaker 2: have been? And for really high value goods, implementing secure
Speaker 2: authentication using proper cryptographic algorithms like eightyes between the tag
Speaker 2: and reader.
Speaker 1: So much more sophisticated security.
Speaker 2: Much more Yeah. Then there's product life cycle management or PLM.
Speaker 2: This is another area where RFID was pushing boundaries, introducing
Speaker 2: the idea of closed loop PLM, meaning extending the tracking
Speaker 2: of product information beyond just the point of sale, through
Speaker 2: its entire usage life cycle, and even to its.
Speaker 1: End of life, following it cradle to grave.
Speaker 2: Decisely, and here the idea of product embedded information devices
Speaker 2: or peides came up. These are essentially RFID tags beefed
Speaker 2: up with sensors designed to gather real time status data
Speaker 2: throughout the product's life. A really compelling example given was
Speaker 2: for end of life vehicle or ELV recovery. Imagine cars
Speaker 2: having pees. When the car reaches the scrap yard, the
Speaker 2: keya could supplay vital info, what materials are in it,
Speaker 2: who made specific parts, its usage, its.
Speaker 1: Maintenance history, helping recyclers.
Speaker 2: Exactly, helping them identify and recover valuable parts for reuse
Speaker 2: or recycling much more efficiently, boosting earnings and sustainability.
Speaker 1: That's clever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And for a location tracking system, RTLS RFID was
Speaker 2: often integrated with other wireless tech people already had, like
Speaker 2: Wi Fi or maybe ultra wideband UWP, trying to get
Speaker 2: real time location, often relying on metrics like received signal
Speaker 2: strength RSS.
Speaker 1: How strong, right, But.
Speaker 2: A critical challenge there is that RSS can fluctuate wildly
Speaker 2: over time, even if the tag stays in the exact
Speaker 2: same spot, because of things like shadow fading someone walks past,
Speaker 2: or multi path fading signals bouncing off walls and interfering.
Speaker 1: Like the Wi Fi dead spots.
Speaker 2: Again exactly like that, But they found that strategic deployment
Speaker 2: like increasing the number of readers, spacing them out well
Speaker 2: and using enough training points to calibrate the system could
Speaker 2: significantly improve the location accuracy.
Speaker 1: So careful planning helps it does.
Speaker 2: And finally, looking really ahead autonomous logistics. This was the
Speaker 2: futuristic vision of intelligent objects. Intelligent objects, yeah, logistic items, palettes, containers,
Speaker 2: maybe even individual products augmented with enough intelligence to store
Speaker 2: and process their own relevant data, maybe communicate with other
Speaker 2: objects nearby and interact with their environment to make decentralized decisions,
Speaker 2: like a palette routing itself through a warehouse.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, that's stepping into sci fi territory almost.
Speaker 2: It was definitely forward looking, but it highlighted the need
Speaker 2: for tags with much more memory than just a simple
Speaker 2: ID number. They'd need to store static details like I'm
Speaker 2: made of plastic type X, but also dynamic data that
Speaker 2: gets updated current temperature, precise location, my maintenance log.
Speaker 1: So the tag becomes a mini database.
Speaker 2: Kind of yeah, but a challenge even back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. Also mentioned was data transmission speed. If
Speaker 2: you have a lot of data to write to the tag,
Speaker 2: it could be slow. The book notes that writing just
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty eight bytes with a handheld UHF
Speaker 2: reader could still take around three seconds.
Speaker 1: Okay, not instantaneous for large amounts of data.
Speaker 2: Not back then.
Speaker 1: No, that's incredible though. The range from simply identifying something
Speaker 1: to making it intelligent. It really sounds like RFID had
Speaker 1: huge potential even back then. But with all these breakthroughs
Speaker 1: and visions of intelligent objects, what were the big roadblocks?
Speaker 1: What were research you're still grappling with when the book
Speaker 1: was published, What was holding it back from even wider use?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've hit on a crucial point. Despite the potential,
Speaker 2: there were definitely significant hurdles. One major one was simply interference.
Speaker 2: We touched on it with the Swiss Cheese effect, but
Speaker 2: it's broader than that. RFID signals are just susceptible to
Speaker 2: lots of environmental factors, thick walls, big metal surfaces, lots
Speaker 2: of liquid, even static electricity build up or electromagnetic induction
Speaker 2: for machinery.
Speaker 1: So the real world is messy for radio waves.
Speaker 2: Very messy. And this also included interference from other wireless
Speaker 2: networks already out there, like legacy nine hundred bigahertz Wi
Speaker 2: Fi systems that were pretty common in whitehouses back then.
Speaker 2: They could clash with UHF RFID. And there's even a
Speaker 2: striking real world example the book Goose the FCC, the
Speaker 2: US regulator, actually barred the use of certain four hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty three BIGGAHRDS active tag readers within twenty five
Speaker 2: miles of key military radar.
Speaker 1: Systems twenty five miles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because testing had shown they could actually interference with
Speaker 2: these critical radar systems. It really shows how delicate the
Speaker 2: radio frequency environment can be and the need for careful management.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so it's not just getting the tech to
Speaker 1: work in a lab, but getting it to work reliably
Speaker 1: out in the well messy real world. That makes me
Speaker 1: wonder about the broader challenges. What were the critical issues
Speaker 1: that needed sorting out for wider adoption beyond just the
Speaker 1: technical physics stuff.
Speaker 2: Indeed, the challenge is definitely what beyond just the radio waves. First,
Speaker 2: something that was stressed was the need for rigorous testing
Speaker 2: and deployment, and this remains true today frankly, meaning really
Speaker 2: thorough testing for things like tag lifespan how well they
Speaker 2: read in specific situations, how they cope with interference, but
Speaker 2: tailored specifically to the individual products they're actual packaging and
Speaker 2: the real world conditions of a distribution center or store,
Speaker 2: not just generic tests exactly, including multidiresional testing. Does the
Speaker 2: tag read okay if it's upside down or sideways on
Speaker 2: the palette, because in reality, things aren't always perfectly aligned. Right. Second,
Speaker 2: navigating the a really complex landscape of regulatory compliance and
Speaker 2: standardization that was and is vital. You have international standards
Speaker 2: bodies like ISO, national regulators like the FCC, and then
Speaker 2: industry specific groups like EPC global all set of rules,
Speaker 2: getting systems to comply with all of them, ensuring they
Speaker 2: can work together globally. It's a bureaucratic challenge that can
Speaker 2: definitely slow things.
Speaker 1: Down the standards MACE pretty much.
Speaker 2: Then there's the whole area of data integration and security
Speaker 2: processing the potentially massive volumes of raw data coming from
Speaker 2: RFID readers, filtering out duplicate reads of the same tag
Speaker 2: for instance. That's a significant IT.
Speaker 1: Challenge just managing the flood of data.
Speaker 2: Right, And there was even an ongoing debate back then
Speaker 2: about who is actually responsible for cleaning this data? Is
Speaker 2: that the company deploying the readers, the software provider, the
Speaker 2: partners who receive the data.
Speaker 1: MMM pass in the bug potentially Yeah.
Speaker 2: And compounding this was often a reluctance among supply chain
Speaker 2: partners to share sensitive business parts data with each other,
Speaker 2: even though that data could be crucial for understanding why
Speaker 2: RFID readings might look strained or have anomalies.
Speaker 1: Trust issues big time.
Speaker 2: On the security front, features like authenticating tags and readers,
Speaker 2: making sure they're genuine, and the kill command were important.
Speaker 2: The kill yeah a way to permanently deactivate a tag,
Speaker 2: often after the point of sale, mainly for consumer privacy reasons,
Speaker 2: but this needed to be carefully balanced with the legitimate
Speaker 2: need to maybe access the tag's history, its chain of
Speaker 2: custody if a product issue or recall came up later.
Speaker 1: Tricky balance, very tricky.
Speaker 2: The development of something called EPC Information Services or EPCIS
Speaker 2: was a significant step mentioned. It aimed to be a
Speaker 2: standard way for different systems to exchange machine readable data
Speaker 2: about uniquely identified products, designed to work regardless of the
Speaker 2: specific radio freepency being used.
Speaker 1: Trying to standardize the data sharing park exactly.
Speaker 2: And finally, the perpetual challenge always there cost versus benefit,
Speaker 2: that ongoing train off. Do we add integrated sensors, more memory,
Speaker 2: more processing power on the tag? Yes, it adds capability,
Speaker 2: but it also adds cost, and that's especially critical for
Speaker 2: high volume, low margin consumer products, where every fraction of
Speaker 2: a set matters. The barcode is still really cheap, still
Speaker 2: incredibly cheap. So despite all the impressive achievements outlined in
Speaker 2: the book. It really makes it clear that as of
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, RFID technology, for all its promise,
Speaker 2: was still very much considered to be in its infancy.
Speaker 2: There were huge opportunities still there for more innovation, for
Speaker 2: entrepreneurial work to solve these challenges.
Speaker 1: So looking back from then, it really feels like RFID
Speaker 1: was painting this incredibly detailed picture of the physical world
Speaker 1: bit by bit, from tracking that critical aircraft part over
Speaker 1: decades to maybe helping ensure the safety of your food.
Speaker 1: It's about moving beyond just identifying items to really understanding
Speaker 1: their entire journey, their condition, giving them that real world awareness,
Speaker 1: as you called it.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1: We've explored the surprisingly deep history of this really fascinating tech,
Speaker 1: dug into some of the clever engineering breakthroughs that made
Speaker 1: it possible, and uncovered this surprising range of applications across
Speaker 1: so many different industries, highlighting both the impact it was
Speaker 1: already having back when this text was written and also
Speaker 1: those frontiers that were still waiting to be crossed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this deep dive today it kind of reminds
Speaker 2: us that while this knowledge helps us understand what is
Speaker 2: happening technologically. It also raises important questions about how we
Speaker 2: choose to use that information, doesn't it. It's true as
Speaker 2: RFID continues to reveal more and more about the state
Speaker 2: and history of objects, giving them this real world awareness,
Speaker 2: maybe you can ask yourself what new possibilities or perhaps
Speaker 2: what new responsibilities might emerge when potentially everything can tell
Speaker 2: its own story.
Speaker 1: That's a deep thought to end on what new responsibilities
Speaker 1: come with that knowledge exactly?
Speaker 2: So maybe think about it what stands out to you
Speaker 2: most about how this technology might shape, or maybe already
Speaker 2: has shaped the world around us.