“So in exchange for volunteering information, each child receives a ‘smart card’ of some sort?” someone was asking as Dante inched up to the front of the crowd.
“It’s not a card; it’s a tag inserted directly under the skin,” a ChildWhere rep explained, holding a picture of a tiny chip aloft so everyone could see. “Kids being kids, they will lose an ID card. And this is completely painless.”
The questions flowed thick and fast: How is the tag administered? What are its properties? What types of readers are used? Where is the information stored? What kinds of databases are necessary on the back end?
“You really believe that parents are going to buy into this?” Dante finally asked. “They’ll willingly ‘chip’ their children?”
“It’s a dangerous world,” the representative replied, pointing to a nearby poster that tallied the number of children who had been kidnapped or had run away in each of the last ten years. “People are thrilled to use this technology to save themselves 30 seconds at a tollbooth every day. Wouldn’t they use it to save their kids’ lives? Wouldn’t you?”
Dante wanted to argue that there was a big difference between physically modifying your windshield and physically modifying your child. Still, he was intrigued. Raydar was in the tracking business, and this, clearly, was where tracking was headed. This particular application made him uncomfortable, sure. But if the people on his team were smart and creative—and Dante was confident that they were—they could figure out how to use the technology. It would take time, research, innovation, and perhaps a sizable investment in R&D. It would mean setting boundaries and sticking to them. He would begin the conversation next month at the executive committee meeting, and then maybe over the next year…
As his brain whirred, Dante’s eyes passed idly over the crowd. They focused, suddenly, on a familiar face. A few yards away stood Carol Sullivan, marketing director at KK Incorporated, a major customer whose supply chain Raydar was revamping. Carol was deep in conversation with a member of her staff. The two were visibly excited: Carol kept thumbing through the ChildWhere brochure while her colleague scribbled rapidly in a notebook. Dante noticed for the first time that the room felt very cold.