Every couple of weeks between piracy rants from the RIAA, we religiously hear from privacy advocates shouting of the latest invasions Corporate America is preparing to push upon the general public. If there’s one thing that we as a whole just seem to get our knickers in a knot upon the slightest notion of, it’s the infringement of our rights and privacy seems to be right up there with all of the big ones (you know – freedom of speech, right to carry a big gun – that sort of thing!). But my question is this – what if, by some crazy chance, these folks are just blowing this entire concept way out of proportion???
My case-in-point comes from a couple of very specific examples, the first of which can affect both the buyer and the seller alike at the local super center. Just a short while ago, the retail giant Wal-Mart began requiring all of its suppliers to incorporate RFID tags into their shipping systems if they wanted to continue doing business with the company. The tag acts as a tiny transmitter – very small and pretty much very cheap – which enables the largest retailer in the world to do something that no other warehousing company even a fraction of its size would’ve fathomed ten years ago – at any given time, they can tell you exactly how many of an item are in stock, how many are currently on order or en route from distribution centers, and even what location within the company the products can be found. I’ve done my share of time working in warehouses and can remember all too fondly the joys of trying to guess which items were on the truck that just called in as being stuck in a snow drift, so the benefit to this system pretty much hits you right in the face – easier tracking is cheaper tracking, and hence the low, low prices that we’ve come to expect are able to remain as such…
But the other side of these RFID tags is what has consumer advocates all up in arms and that’s concerning what else the company is able to use them for after these products have left the store altogether and returned with us to our homes. Given these types of advancements coupled with the tracking that already takes place at the point-of-sale, it might not be too long before marketing studies will be able to not only disclose that Bill religiously purchases three boxes of chocolate Pop-Tarts every second Tuesday of the month, but also that he in fact consumes the first box before he leaves the parking lot and the remainder while he’s stuck in rush hour traffic on I-90 for the commute home. While an unlikely scenario nonetheless, the entire Big Brother is Watching You movement has always had this kind of creepy effect on the general public, so why stop now?!
But allow me to play the devil’s advocate for just a moment by asking the critical question here: where’s the harm in any of this, really?! The focal point always seems to be that rights are being infringed upon and that everyone is out to get poor, innocent Mr. Consumer, but most fail to realize that these are simply tactics being taken by the largest providers of consumer goods in the world to be able to present us with products at the lowest possible cost…something that we’ve been demanding ever since the days when bartering was all of the rage! (Six beaver pelts?! That’s outrageous – I’ll give you four beaver pelts and not a mammal more!) Ranging everywhere from product placement to theft prevention to knowing which items don’t really need to be stocked in a given area altogether, tracking truly is an essential section of the pie when it comes to being successful in the retail industry…at least on the scale that corporations such as Wal-Mart are now measured. Hey, if you can save me a few bucks on every DVD that I purchase by lowering your own shipping cost requirements via electronic tracking, then you’ve effectively made me one happy consumer – now just track some microwave popcorn my way and we’ll be in business…
Interesting Side Point: Wal-Mart actually already employs several techniques to effectively manage the supply and demand end of their business, including even the incorporation of local weather conditions into their shipping manifests. As it has been statistically proven among their stores that residents tend to stock up on such important staples as Pop-Tarts when hurricanes linger off in the distance, you can bet that extra quantities are already en route from nearby distribution centers even before the weatherman has made his announcement to the masses…
Of course, there are so many other aspects of this discussion that I simply don’t have the space to talk about here today, but I think the important thing that I want to express at this point is that much like in other similar situations, we really need to embrace technology and give it a chance before chastising it back to the drawing board because of the skeptical doubts of a few nay-sayers. We constantly hear people yell and scream about the concept of tracking their preferences in the grocery store to make things a little easier for the businesses, but the double-standard never seems to apply when you are able to enhance my shopping experiences with such advances. The tracking of an individual for pretty much any means via cell phone or another portable transmitter is still strictly forbidden, yet it’s ok to utilize the technology to help recover somebody’s stolen car or SUV???
It’s when we move past all of this petty bantering that we’ll truly be able to see what electronic tracking can do for us – refrigerators and pantries that will print you a shopping-list-to-date based on their contents (this would be great!), smart luggage that links itself to your tickets and knows ahead of time when it’s being loaded onto the wrong plane to prevent the loss before it even happens, possibly even a new revolution in the shipping industry that would provide us with a cool, Superman-like map with the flags showing exactly where our packages were en route! As always, the innovation of technology is limited only by the creativity of its creator – let’s ditch this political nonsense and join, or dare I say even lead, the world here in this new millennium…
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