Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies

UNESCO, an education arm of the United Nations, just published a report titled Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies. The first four chapters deal with metadata, digital identity management, biometrics and radio frequency identification. I was talking with a colleague about all the wonderful things RFID tags could do if they were on books. You could do inventory quickly, shelf-reading could be done with a hand held device. Locating a missing book in the library would be a piece of cake. Then we started talking about the negatives - the privacy invasions. Any person with the right technology could drive by your house and see what you were reading! The stigma of "being tracked" might even stop some people from picking up a controversial title.

If you read that section of the report you will learn that airlines might start using RFID tags to stay on top of your luggage, and that employers are already placing RFID tags into employee badges to track their whereabouts.

On the practical side of librarianship, doing a retrofitting of all books for RFID tags would be a very costly and time consuming venture. You would also need a different type of security gate, compatible software to checkout the books and new software for collection management, plus train all of your staff and student workers on how to use all of that stuff.