On the morning of the Recalling RFID public program at Amsterdam’s De Balie, I passed one of the newly installed OV chipcard terminals at the metro station. It proved to be the beginning of a day that aimed to recall Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID). And through heated debate, recalling seemed to be two-fold: regain awareness of the topic to build on the past or, as Katherine Albrecht proposed, cancel the technology as a whole.
Flickr photo coverage by Anne Helmond After having escaped the RFID terminals in Amsterdam’s metro station, the audience was introduced to the subject by a short film/demonstration -see embedded video- in which people are shown walking, running, chatting and more importantly being watched in a shopping mall. The voyeuristic camera caught everyone in sight and showed detailed information of the avatars in the physical space and a flickering red warning in the case of an untagged person. The cyberpunk science-fiction of the 1980s has now almost become a reality, the fairy tale vision of first session moderator Rob van Kranenburg takes us even further into a possible future: ‘I see myself walking through the woods and suddenly a screen pops up from a tree and has info about the place’. The Recalling RFID program put a strong focus on the question where are we now, and more importantly on the question: where are we heading? Session moderator Rob van Kranenburg mentions the concept of (Un)common Ground as a way to debate this move towards RFID and bring together people from various disciplines, in this case the field of RFID, and share experiences to perhaps create new visions.
Full report at Virtueel Platform
