One might ask why a book about a seldom noticed technology having little obvious connection to media should be of interest to communication and media scholars. Although nominally a tool for identifying and separating millions or billions of objects as they move about, radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that also communicates information about those objects (sometimes quite a lot of information). A Billion Little Pieces fits within a scholarly tradition that focuses on illuminating infrastructure and processes that tend to operate outside of any critical gaze–in this case, the varied and important roles RFID plays in enabling consumer electronics, credit cards, passports, subway cards, and many other objects–including some animal and human bodies to be part of a large object communication infrastructure. In diving into that under-analyzed infrastructure, Frith draws on the rich literature of several disciplines including communication, sociology, law, ethics, political science, geography, and history in discussing and analyzing various case examples and the meaning of the way objects communicate in those contexts. Those different lenses provide a solid platform to develop broad and deep insight into the evolution and impact of RFID in society. This is not primarily a technology or computer science book, and it is clearly intended for audiences without deep physics or engineering backgrounds. The discussion of engineering or technology details is clear and seldom goes deeper than the minimum necessary for a basic understanding of the different types of RFID and how the devices work, so the author can address broader questions. Frith does a very good job covering why object identification and sorting is seen as essential in

中文翻译：

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十亿小件：RFID 和识别基础设施

有人可能会问，为什么传播学和媒体学者应该对一本关于一种鲜为人知的与媒体几乎没有明显联系的技术的书感兴趣。尽管名义上是一种用于在物体移动时识别和分离数以百万计或数十亿物体的工具，但射频识别 (RFID) 是一种还可以传达有关这些物体的信息（有时是相当多的信息）的技术。十亿小件符合学术传统，专注于阐明倾向于在任何批判性凝视之外运行的基础设施和流程——在这种情况下，RFID 在支持消费电子产品、信用卡、护照、地铁卡、和许多其他物体——包括一些动物和人体，作为大型物体通信基础设施的一部分。在深入分析未充分分析的基础设施时，Frith 借鉴了包括传播学、社会学、法律、伦理学、政治学、地理学和历史在内的多个学科的丰富文献，讨论和分析了各种案例以及对象在其中进行交流的方式的含义。那些上下文。这些不同的视角提供了一个坚实的平台，可以对 RFID 在社会中的演变和影响进行广泛而深入的了解。这主要不是一本技术或计算机科学书籍，它显然是为没有深厚物理或工程背景的读者准备的。对工程或技术细节的讨论很清楚，很少比基本了解不同类型的 RFID 和设备工作方式所需的最低限度更深入，因此作者可以解决更广泛的问题。