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date: 21 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

The phrase the Internet of things was originally coined in a 1999 presentation about attaching radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to individual objects. These tags would make the objects machine-readable, uniquely identifiable, and, most importantly, wirelessly communicative with infrastructure. This chapter evaluates RFID as a piece of mobile communicative infrastructure, and it examines two emerging forms: near-field communication (NFC) and Bluetooth low-energy beacons. The chapter shows how NFC and Bluetooth low-energy beacons may soon move some types of RFID to smartphones, in this way evolving the use of RFID in payment and transportation and enabling new practices of post-purchasing behaviors.

Keywords: near-field communication, iBeacon, surveillance, logistics, RFID

Jordan Frith

Jordan Frith is the Pearce Professor of Professional Communication at Clemson University. He is the author of three books and more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles. His third book—A Billion Little Pieces: RFID and Infrastructures of Identification—was published by MIT Press in 2019. The book examines how the adoption of RFID technologies shifts identification practices and enacts a more mobile, data-reliant infrastructure of identification.

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