Tuesday, June 13, 2006

One of my dreams has come true

When I was 7, my parents let me roam free during the day. I climbed in and out of neighbors' yards, happily trespassing. The two most exciting categories of discoveries at the time were:

1. a hole in a neighbor's chain link fence. I would immediately try to squeeze through it. The smaller the hole, the happier I was when I surmounted the challenge and entered the neighbor's exciting backyard!

2. mounds of objects heaped in the yard. A pile of unused tires provided me hours of happy entertainment. Hunks of rusty metal rods piled willy-nilly was a cherished landmark.

I want to give this flexibility to my own children, but I'll likely live in a cultured dangerous high-tech city (like Mountain View), as opposed to safe Salt Lake City and Las Cruces, New Mexico where I spent my pre-teen years.

All my adult life, I've been waiting for someone to invent the technology that would allow me to track my kids. I would gladly implant a RFID chip in their necks if I could then let them roam free, knowing that I could find them if I needed to. [Editor's note: Omar, I'm so glad you convinced me to re-enable comments on the same night I discuss implanting my kids with RFID chips.]

And now, tonight, Verizon has made my dream come true:

Verizon Launches Child Locator Service
June 12, 2006, 1:49 PM

Verizon on Monday introduced a new service aimed at parents who wish to keep track of where their children are through their cell phones. Additionally, the service will give children a way to easily contact their parents.

The parent would be able to see where the phone is located from a map on the Verizon Web site.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sprint has offered a similar service for some time -- http://www.moconews.net/sprint-unveils-mobile-child-locator-service-2.html

om said...

oh man, you're going to rfid your kids? the problem is, you'll look even when it's not an emergency!

also, i think that if you're going to rfid them, it's only fair if you rfid yourself and tell them: "now look, *you* can find mommy just like i can find you!"

my children are going to be embedded with rfid scramblers, so whenever they're around children with rfid tags in them, it will scramble any signal the tags are producing, and hence not allow devices to identify their whereabouts!

ps when i was little my sister and i went over to the mean neighbors place and trampled their flowers! and we were caught! we were so sad, but we really didn't like those neighbors!

L. Wu said...

Is Mountain View so dangerous?

Sure, I see cops driving around my hood at all hours, people are yelling right now outside my window, and I often get referred to by slangy slurs spoken in a (!Sino) language I do happen to very well understand, but...

...okay, so maybe I am thinking of driving to buy some tonfa today in Sunnyvale.

om said...

i can't believe you'd rfid your kids! are you going to allow them to find you easily? will you be rfided so they can open their phone and find out where you are?

you know, if i have kids, i'm going to wire them up with a scrambler, so that others with rfid tracking, when near my kids, will be temporarily removed from tracking. my kids'll be the coolest on the block.. unlike me.. when i was a kid... :|

:)

ps somewhat unrelated, but regarding unruly children: when i was little, my sister and i stomped on some of the neighbors flowers because we hated them, they were so mean to us! we were caught. but it didn't matter!

N said...

> will you be rfided so they can open their phone and find out where you are?

No.

They'll ask, "Why not?" (just like you are right now).

And I'll gleefully run in the bedroom and put on this shirt.

om said...

your kids should plaster this shirt to their walls at an early age

:)