RFID 2.0
Tikitag da Alcatel-Lucent (via Engadget)
Post do Engadget (via Fernando Firmino em email à lista do GPC) mostra o Tikitag, projeto com RFID da Alcatel-Lucent com o objetivo de tornar mais fácil a “internet das coisas“. Você pode colocar um dessas tags em qualquer coisa que ela passa a ter capacidade de conexão à internet (a uma página própria, a outras informações relacionadas, etc). Esse é um dos uso interessantes da RFID, para além do uso meramente corporativo para marketing e estratégias de mapeamento de perfis de consumo. De acordo com o post:
“(…) The system, which Tikitag confidently boasts will “build the internet of things,” promises to let you add an RFID tag to anything you like and associate it with a webpage or application — for instance, a business card that links to page with all your social networking information or, less usefully, a cube that you can use to control iTunes. Intrigued? You’ll apparently be able to pick up the Tikitag reader and ten tikitags for $50 on October 1st, with boxes of 25 tikitags also available for those looking to get a little more ambitious.”
Para além de classificar essas etiquetas RFID apenas como Spychips (dimensão grave e em expansão), elas têm a potência para ser também mais uma ferramenta “bottom-up” dando às pessoas a possibilidade de produzir conteúdo e de anexá-lo à grande rede mundial. Trata-se então de lutar contra as formas de agenciamento que colocam o usuário como alvo passivo (do marketing, das seguradoras e da publicidade) e criar outras formas de uso em que esses mesmos usuários produzam conteúdos e indexações próprias. As etiquetas Tikitag representam mais uma tentativa, comercial, nesse sentido. A Nokia fez experiência similar em 2005 com o Nokia3220. Vamos ver no que vai dar.
Para mais sobre essa discussão sugiro a leitura do artigo “RFID & Agency. The Cultural and Social Possibilities of RFID”, de Klaas Kuitenbrouwer no número 11 da revista Open. Abaixo alguns trechos do paper:
Projeto Zapped!, colocando uma etiqueta RFID em uma barata e largando o inseto em lojas Wall Mart, NY, 2004 (citado no texto de Kuitenbrower)
“An ‘internet of things’ can also increase the experienced value of objects. Things that are tagged can start preserving their own history. During their existence, objects gather additional value online. With the aid of rfid, whole new categories of hybrid objects and experiences will be created. As for the distribution of agency, account will then have to be taken of a new type of player: the ‘scripted’ object.
(…) The enormous interest in rfid from all those businesses for which tracking, tracing and uniquely identi?ed objects play an important role means that the advance of rfid is not going to cease for the time being. Opposition to it from consumer organizations mainly has to do with the ease with which everyone can invent privacy-threatening scenarios in a world crawling with rfids. At the same time, the complete disregard by the major market parties of a possible say on the part of consumers and citizens concerning the introduction and applications of rfid is also an important factor. One way out might be to think about other possible distributions of agency on the part of those using rfid applications. We can leave this to market forces, but it would be better to do it ourselves. Just as the Internet after the dotcom implosion has still managed to become the domain of democratic media production, so too can a large-scale implementation of rfid (after the stumbling of rfid 1.0 over privacy issues) become a terrain for a public sphere developing from bottom-up. Not all its content will be relevant, but what’s more important is that rfid 2.015 offers a network for new relations between people and things15. Analogous to Web 2.0, the internet of social software and user created content.(…)”