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Introduction

Comp1017 Digital Technology's Assignment 1 Question Discuss the functions and ethics of identification and tracking computing technology embedded in everyday products. The major functions of the identification and tracking computing technology is to increase efficiency, reduce data loss and free up staff positions. The technology will also be able to track certain products for there life time. So a good example of this type of technology would be Auto - ID technology, so with this type of technology each particular object will be embedded with a chip, which will be able to communicate with either the customer or the manufacturer. Other products that come under the term Auto - ID technology would be barcode scanners, smart cards and voice recognisers. Also radio frequency identification would also come under the term Auto - ID technology and this is the product which I am going to talk about in this essay. When a manufacture is producing his products on all of his products he would add a Radio frequency Identification tag, which will contain product codes, each tag should also contain a radio antenna, the chip itself is about as big as a grain of sand and costs less then a penny, so the cost of this technology would not cost the company that much. ...read more.

Middle

then go home, because there are tags inserted in the products and when the customer leaves the shop the sensors will pick up the products and send a bill to the house of the customers. Another example of a electronic tracking system would be an electric tagging system for criminals. This works by the criminal having an electric tag on his ankle, and certain boundaries will also be tagged and if the criminal was to move out of that area, then a message would be sent to a signal monitoring station. Also using a global positioning satellite, people would be able to view certain criminals at any time, and if they were to get to close to a potential victim then a message could be sent to the police, so they could make the address before the crime took place. When talking about the ethics of the technology used, you must look at both sides of the story their will be both good and bad points, the first points I am going to talk about are the bad points. Customers may be put off the technology, if a tag stays alive for up to 10 years then a manufacture could find out were a particular customer lives by tracing a particular tag, and then the customer might be very cautious with everything that he buys in the future, and is this morally correct for a company to know were you live whether you want them are not. ...read more.

Conclusion

The public may also see the introduction of human electronic tagging bad idea because it gives a second chance to criminals, so they can come out earlier of prison and be let back into society. So in my concussion to the argument I would agree with the arguments against the tagging process, I think that the public are being miss lead into the process. The public need to know about the tagging for it to be justified, maybe if the company were to change the way they manufactured their chips, it would make them better if they had a limited life. Also if the company were to advertise their chips, letting the public now about them, as they might not be as cautious about using there products, But with respect to the shopping technology which lets you walk out of the shop with out paying and you get sent a bill to your home address, I am completely agree with this type of technology because I think it would revolutionise the way in which we shop to this date. I agree with the process of the human electronic tagging and the ethics behind that type of technology, depending on which crime has been committed, and if it was a smaller crime then these criminals would be allowed to be moved out of the jails and put on this electronic tagging system, which would free up jail space for the bigger criminals. ...read more.

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