Mashed Articles

Near field communication is going to spice up the mobile market, you say? Piffle. Contactless payments are going to help me get in and out of shops quicker simply by pointing my card at some sort of radiating reader and running? Hogwash. My passport needs a chip in it? No. Just no.

But here we are: there is indeed a chip in my passport, even though I don’t want it there. My wallet, if properly stimulated, is already sending out more messages than your average botnet. Heck, even my iPhone is recording my every move without my permission, and I can’t stop it. If I want to play nice with technology, I’m going to have to exude my unique information scent for anyone who wants to sniff it.

The absolute last thing we as an increasingly privacy-obsessed society need or want is for our pockets to be broadcasting or logging everything. I’m not quite as disgusted with the under-the-counter location-logging that Apple’s been doing on the iPhone. I lock my handset and encrypt my backups, so it won’t be an issue, but I can’t understand why people are actively choosing to record their location. Why would you ever geotag a tweet? Do you explicitly want someone to load up an application like Cree.py and virtually stalk your movements?

And what is the point of Foursquare? The only place I’ll ever be ‘mayor’ of is my desk, or maybe my house. And when I’m at my desk, you can be sure I’m not in my house. I have a nice TV. Please don’t steal it. I’ll let you be mayor of my house if you don’t.

Near field communication, which you can at least switch off, isn’t going to spice up the mobile market. It’ll be just another thing, a feature you have but don’t use, a security hole put there under the cloak of worthwhile functionality. Considering the dire impact PayPal already has on my bank balance, I think I can do without more ways to spend money easily. I’m strong enough to carry coins, so I will.

Its possible impact also remains to be seen, but I’m willing to bet it’s going to be minimal at best. NFC has been active in Japan for some years; why has it taken this long to reach our shores? Shouldn’t we just, y’know, use Bluetooth? Or not bother? Two equally plausible solutions.Then there’s my collection of plastic. I’ve had some sort of RFID chip sitting in my bank card for years now. It has no function other than to screw up the other RFID-enabled cards in my wallet, making it a chore to even get into the PC Plus office.

I’ll admit that Oyster cards – about the only acceptable example of wave-and-go transactions I can think of – are all well and good if you’re stuck in our dismal capital. It’s quick and easy to get on the tube with a little flourish of magic. That’s great. But out here in opulent Bath we have no need for such sorcery. We have those extra few seconds it takes to push a magnetic card into a mechanical reader in order to gain access to the bus. We can even cope with interacting with a human to buy a ticket. We walk through life behind technology’s pace.

“Get to the point, Cox, you rambling complain-o-monster”? Certainly. I have a Nintendo 3DS. We’re doing a big investigation next issue on the way its barmy 3D screen affects the eyes (here’s a clue – there’s a throb just beneath my skull that suggests my brain is growing a new annex just to comprehend it), but it’s the StreetPass feature that has me most obsessed.

Basically it’s all that sinister and annoying tech above put to frivolous use; stride around a city, come within 100ft of someone also using StreetPass, and you’ll get some sort of vague interaction. Maybe you’ll receive their Mii, which you can use to help fight monsters in a rudimentary RPG. Maybe you’ll get a set of combatant figurines ready to do battle in Street Fighter. Maybe you’ll walk around a crowd for an hour cursing because you’ve had no contact at all. Whichever it is, it’s a satisfying application of wireless communication that seems, at least to the naked eye, to be entirely safe.

It’s not pushing society forward at all, and it’s a waste of the already meagre battery life of the 3DS, but it’s also a nice thing that isn’t going to surreptitiously empty my wallet or get my house broken into.

At least, I hope not. I’ll try not to dig any deeper. I’ll try to ignore the fact that an appropriately lifelike Mii could see me hunted down in a McDonalds by an oik who wants to make new friends, or that using my online handle could see me stalked on Twitter. Good job it doesn’t do blue hair, and that my avatar has an entirely neutral name. The fact that StreetPass is utterly impersonal is my favourite thing about it.