RFID tagging: pricey, dicey and distrusted

As anyone who has ever tried to escape from a supermarket knows, Murphy's Law of perversity governs the exits. This means that if you choose the short queue the shopper at the front will bellyache about being overcharged and, while you wait stoically during the ensuing commotion, all other queues will dissolve. If, on the other hand, you choose the long queue, it will take longer to subside than radiation.

One solution is to shop online. But that usually means receiving substandard, unwanted produce.

Now, however, there is another possible remedy: the radio frequency identification (RFID) label or 'smart tag'. This thing is tiny - somewhere between the size of a grain of sand and a speck of dust - but, in theory at least, effective.

In the future smart tags may enable an electronic reader to detect every item in your trolley (no direct line of sight required) and ring each up almost instantly. The reader will be linked to a network that will send product information to the retailer and manufacturers.

Your bank will then be notified and the amount will be shaved from your savings. Not that you will notice - in the time it takes to finish this sentence you will have wafted out of the supermarket, saving precious Now Economy time.

Anthony Higginbottom, the RFID programme leader for Deloitte Consulting, describes the technology's future as 'very bright'.