RFID--A Key to Automating Everything: Scientific American

"Thirteen years ago, in an article for Scientific American, the late Mark Weiser, then my colleague at Xerox PARC, outlined his bold vision of “ubiquitous computing”: small computers would be embedded in everyday objects all around us and, using wireless connections, would respond to our presence, desires and needs without being actively manipulated. This network of mobile and fixed devices would do things for us automatically and so invisibly that we would notice only their effects. Weiser called such systems “calm technology,” because they would make it easier for us to focus on our work and other activities, instead of demanding that we interact with and control them, as the typical PC does today.

"Today systems based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology are helping to move Weiser’s vision closer to reality. These systems consist of tags (small silicon chips that contain identifying data and sometimes other information) and of readers that automatically receive and decode that data.