Site Watch, on RFID is an irregular column by Treanna Szelei of SFU that is part of digest a report on emerging trends in “human-technology interaction and e-lifestyles.” This column has good starting spots on RFID (Radio Frequency Indentification), arguably the most important embedded technology that people don’t know about. RFID has the potential to be a huge surveillance and privacy issue, but the tags are so small and unobtrusive that we don’t know they are there. Not knowing they are there, unlike active badges, means that we don’t worry about them potentially leaving us all wearing active tags that can be tracked.
I discovered digest trying to location information about NewMIC (New Media Innovation Centre). NewMIC was a high profile, multi-sector collaboration set up in Vancouver that has been quietly closed. SFU was one of the partners and, I think, digest was an activity associated with it. digest seems to have ceased publishing from December 2003 (which is when I figure NewMIC closed) until the recent April 2004 issue. Most of the articles seem to be adaptations of thesis proposals by graduate students at the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology.
The dissappearance of NewMIC is illustrative of what the web is not good at. If you google NewMIC you find all sorts of breathless announcements about NewMIC, but I couldn’t find any information on when or why it was closed. Generally the web is helpful at finding information about things that someone has a reason to document and maintain. Entities that want to dissappear can just remove all their web sites and all that is left are the links and announcements (as the Bin Laden Trading company did after 9/11.) For more on ghost sites see Ghost Sites: Where Dead Web Sites Live On.
I am sure some of details above are wrong – this is, afterall, an entry partly on what is not there. Please leave a comment if you have corrections or details.