Marmite jars automatically announce to their shelf scanner when they're nearly out of stock - setting in train re-ordering and delivery.
No need for a checkout either: the products in your bag check themselves out and automatically debit your account. And a scanner in your fridge automatically adds to the shopping list when the milk is low or past its use-by date.
Sounds impossible, but wedo have the technology.
The more expensive "active" tags have a battery so they can transmit data themselves. The cheaper "passive" ones have no battery but draw their power from the electromagnetic pulse sent out by a reader or scanner over a distance of up to two metres. The pulse induces a current in the tag's antenna - essentially waking it up and getting its unique product code information .
Fantastic. But as US privacy group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian) points out, there is a downside: "RFID chips, tiny tracking devices the size of a grain of dust, can be used to secretly identify you and the things you're carrying - right through your clothes, wallet, backpack, or purse. Have you already taken one home with you?"
Caspian and other privacy groups were influential in getting Benetton to back off on its plans to put radio tags in its Sisley-branded clothing - tiny chips that would be "imperceptible to the wearer and remain in individual items of clothing throughout their lifetime".
Which sounds awfully like the technology in the film Minority Report, where John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise) walks past a line of talking advertising billboards and is courted by Guinness and Lexus to buy.
In the film, iris scans rather than clothing tags were used to identify and target individuals. As Caspian founder Katherine Albrecht warns, Benetton's chips could do the same by linking your name and credit card information to the serial number in your pullover. Then any time you go near a radio tag reader, the pullover could beam out your identity and buying history without your knowledge or permission.
A similar furore erupted in Britain when retail giant Tesco began testing radio tags on Gillette razor blades - programming them to send a message to a closed circuit TV camera whenever a customer picked up a packet.
That prompted Liberal Democrat MP Richard Allan to say: "With RFID tags in circulation, all kinds of personal information will be collected about you that won't be properly protected. I don't think we want everyone to know where we are at any point of the day."
Indeed. Caspian also uncovered some of the confidential PR spin that the Auto-ID Center plans to use to soften us all up.
Information from 20 focus groups in five countries also indicates they've got a battle on their hands: "Virtually all groups spontaneously said that the 'chip should be able to be killed' (their language)."
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Auto-ID Center report
