[Page 1483]RFID Chip

A radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip is a small, wireless microchip used to identify objects and people. The chip, usually referred to as a tag, is able to uniquely identify individual items in a particular location in real time. RFID is often associated with a drive for increasing automatic identification (auto ID) whereby human observation is replaced by machines working unobtrusively to perform this task with greater accuracy. In this way, RFID forms part of the assemblage of invisible or ubiquitous computing. This is when computing devices are embedded into objects or the built environment in such a way that they become invisible and unobtrusive.

The roots of RFID technology can be traced back to the development and deployment of radar in the Second World War, but ...