The year is 2003, just. The stupidly expensive nanotech gizmotron that I ordered for Christmas glares back at me defiantly, knowing that I can't send it back without losing face.

Of course, the thing is useless. The tiny screen is too dim; the voice recognition refuses to recognise; the IR interferes with my wristwatch; and the WiFi CF card is an expensive extra.

The year is now 2023, just. The stupidly expensive gimmick that I ordered for Christmas from ?

Yes, you guessed it. It's New Year's day for the rest of us, but it's groundhog day for those buying the bleeding-edge technologies.

However, we should all take our hats off to those gullible guinea pigs who sacrifice themselves so willingly on the pyres of untried technology - because they do it for our ultimate benefit.

And it would do no harm at all if we take a speculative look at what these unfortunates are buying.

Their unwanted Christmas gifts may be showing the rest of us some of the ways that information will be exchanged and used in the future.

We may think we're suffering from information overload at the moment, partly because of all the articles about information overload. However, the invasion of 'radio frequency identification (RFID) tags is about to begin.

These mite-sized critters are tiny passive transponders that don't even need their own power supply, and allow us to uniquely identify and track anything that moves. And all these movements can be stored and interpreted.

The idea of using RFIDs goes back to the Second World War, when allied aircraft carried heavy transponders that could belt out an 'identification friend or foe' coded radio signal.

Already, an estimated 70 billion RFIDs worldwide (most smaller and lighter than the original models) are being used to identify items such as passes, packages, paintings and even pets.

But, with a minimum unit cost of 30p for the RFIDs and £640 for the readers, it only makes sense at the moment to use these tags for valuables. There is also, as always, a problem with standardisation.

However, both the cost and the standardisation barriers are about to come crashing down.

The aptly named Alien Technology Corporation in Silicon Valley is at the forefront of developing much cheaper tags and readers, and the industry-backed Auto-ID Centre, working across three continents, is defining the 96-bit electronic product code (ePC) that it hopes will become the worldwide standard.

Professor Sanjay Sarma, technologist-in-chief and co-founder of the Auto-ID centre, indicated that this 96-bit ePC is probably big enough to be going on with.

"With 54 bits you can number every grain of rice produced in the world. With 138 bits you can number every molecule on the surface of this planet," he said.

Imagine the implications. You pick up a magazine from the newsagents, and then on impulse grab a pack of donuts, which you hide guiltily inside the magazine.

Not a problem to the RFID reader at the unmanned checkout, which in seconds links up with 'Big Sister' - the 'internet of everything' - not only to correctly match your copy of the magazine to the implanted RFID in your arm, but to debit your bank account for the donuts.

Meanwhile, the warehouse is informed for re-stocking, and your mentor at Weight-Watchers gets an email - but you don't know that.

Just outside, a friendly RFID-enabled e-display flips to a picture of the recently released book, Information Overload.

You get into your car, which informs you that the temperature in the boot will be lowered by five degrees for the donuts. You get home. The donuts go into the fridge, which sets itself an alarm based on the sell-by-date.

Does all this sound far-fetched? Maybe not. Field trials with networks of readers tracking low-cost Alien Technology RFIDs are already taking place. What's more, the necessary improvements in storage technologies are also happening.

Philips has recently announced its intention to launch, in just two years, a small form factor optical drive that will fit snugly inside a mobile phone.

The drive will take tiny 3cm disks, but each will be capable of recording and playing back an incredible four gigabytes of data. That's the equivalent of 10 hours of MPEG movies.

Impressive as it may sound at the moment, this is still only storage in two dimensions. 3D holographic storage already promises much more, and we may see the first small desktop holographic data storage systems available as early as this year, if the noises from IBM are to be believed.

We can be sure of one thing: RFIDs will change our lives. At present, 95 per cent of the information on the internet is being generated by humans. Soon, it will be just 5 per cent, with the rest generated by machines.

"I sometimes joke that this is what the internet was invented for," said Kevin Ashton, executive director at Auto-ID.

Information overload is caused by bits of information that are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eliminate these, and we eliminate the problem, regardless of how much information is generated and stored on the Big Sister computers.

We've already come a long way in this respect. Graphical knowledge maps within web search engines can now help us conceptualise information, and XML undoubtedly helps us categorise it.

But when it comes to choosing, it's still down to us to wade through the retrieved weeds.

Imagine. You're using your iris-controlled gizmo-goggles with the latest globally asynchronous/locally synchronous processor to search through Big Sister's archives.

The flick of an eyelid brings up the knowledge map of those articles most likely to be of interest based on your previous searches, which were mostly about donuts.

Your 'life inference feedback algorithm' (LIFA), also stored on Big Sister, then leads you through a decision tree of only three flicks before you find exactly what you're looking for.

LIFA, of course, is your ultimate personal expert system, which is based on every single information exchanging and purchasing activity you have ever been involved in, all carefully recorded and categorised by the armies of RFIDs that are constantly reporting your every move back to Big Sister.

Think this is far-fetched? Then visit Microsoft's Media Presence Lab in San Francisco, which is working on the curiously named 'MyLifeBits' project.

This aims to record and chronicle your life events, so that they become searchable and can be interspersed chronologically into narratives involving other people, events or places.

MyLifeBits becomes your surrogate memory that never forgets, even replacing those shoeboxes full of photos and old love letters in the loft.

The project doesn't involve RFIDs (yet), nor is it envisaged (yet) by the developers that MyLifeBits will be used as an expert system in the context of information exchange.

But you can be sure that one of these days someone somewhere is going to make the link between these ideas.

RFIDs will mean mass redeployment. The checkout assistants can all be absorbed into the millions of committees needed to discuss all the new privacy and security issues.

The criminal fraternity will consist primarily of hackers, computer operators and world leaders, with petty theft relegated to the history books.

Wars will also be declared obsolete. BigSis will deal with stroppy continents by plunging them back into the stone age until they cool off.

Clearly, we have nothing to fear from this Brave New World, and we can look forward with renewed hope and optimism. Except that we will still have to decide what to do with the stupidly expensive gimmicks we received at Christmas.

TALKING TO BIG SIS, THE INTERNET OF EVERYTHING

We're definitely talking wireless here. WiFi 'filling stations' are already springing up all over the developed world, and Bluetooth is also finally on the streets.

But is it possible that alternative input devices will finally kill off the keyboard? Thus far, the marketplace doesn't think so.

Voice input/output technologies are a godsend for the visually impaired, but much too invasive of other people's privacy for common consumption.

And, in spite of the plethora of imaginative pointing and fingering devices controlled by various parts of the body, we constantly come back to the common keyboard for most of our data input.

PDAs are no exception. Touch screens and hand-writing recognition apparently aren't enough, because the add-on thumb keyboards are all the rage.

Together with texting devices, these tiny keyboards are likely to nudge evolution towards muscle-bound thumbs, and prospective keyboarders may even want to add 'I'm all thumbs' to the list of strengths on their CVs.

There is a body of opinion that wants to see the back of qwerty keyboards, fuelled primarily by the story that this layout was deliberately designed to be inconvenient, thus ensuring slower typing speeds in order to avoid jamming the keys on pre-1900 typewriters.

It could be that this jamming story is an urban myth, as claimed by, among others, Virginia Postrel in Forbes magazine. But the resilience of qwerty in the face of alternative layouts is fact.

The Dvorak layout is the best known alternative, and is even available as a built-in option on every Windows operating system, but I have yet to meet another nerd who knows this - such is the dominance of qwerty.

Whatever the device, talking to Big Sis is likely to be a much more intelligent and intuitive experience than we are accustomed to when interrogating information systems.

For starters, she will already know exactly who we are and where we are before we even start thumbing.

Imagine. It's 12.10pm and you're feeling hungry, so you push the BigSis button on your direct methanol fuel cell-powered gizmo-gripper. 'Hi dude,' glows the screen. 'Is this what you were after?'

And then - as expected - you're immediately presented with a route map to the nearest eatery, which happens to be a Dunkin' Donuts.

'Oh, by the way, your magazine subscription is about to run out. Do you want me to update your details so you continue to receive it?' BigSis has interrogated the RFID implant in your forearm to ascertain your identity; and knows from previous around-midday exchanges that you're getting peckish.

Your penchant for donuts is clear from your life inference feedback algorithm, and a combination of GPS and triangulation between RFID readers and wireless masts takes care of the exact locations.

Some of this future is already here. In May 2002, after FDA approval, three VeriChip RFIDs, each about the size of a grain of rice, found their way into the arms of the Florida family now dubbed 'The Chipsons'.

Applied Digital Solutions, which makes the VeriChip, sees "millions" of potential recipients for the technology over the next few years. And later models may also incorporate GPS, according to Keith Bolton, the company's chief technology officer.

The Federal Communications Commission is also doing its bit. By 2005, all wireless communication devices in the US must be able to provide location/identification information, the so-called 'enhanced-911' capability.

And it won't just be the emergency services that know where you are. BigSis will too.

Sjoerd Vogt is an information industry writer and consultant.

See also:

Radio frequency ID tags

The controversial tracking technology looks set to make a big impression this year, as more retailers prepare to explore its possibilities.  09 Jan 2004

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