Plan B: What RFID Chips Can't Do But a Barcode Can

Kim Kincher recently sent me an article on invisible bar codes that proved very valuable to me. It brought home to me the most essential question I should have been asking myself already 15 years ago when I started drafting the chapters on the Mark in my free e-book Walkabout: The History of a Brief Century. The question concerns Plan B, the backup system. What do you do when your customers have only one way of paying, and your scanner doesn't pick up their code, or the power just went, or you're a Suk merchant in the Sahara where electricity is still a century away?

With the current chip hysteria in the US, Plan B is what proves that the Mark can't and won't be a chip. Just like during the Y2K period, American pundits still distinguish themselves by thinking that the rest of the world lives just like them, awash with funds and high technology. Maybe in the US, you don't need to worry so much about how to trade without the primary payment system. Elsewhere, you do. And only 5 per cent of the world's people live in the States.

Bankers outside the US would never commit a blunder like introducing a mandatory payment system with legal tender status that would be totally dependent on high technology and a steady power supply. They have always allowed for graceful degradation, and even in a largely cashless, checkless environment like Finland (where I live), there's always the option of manual backup. If your card is unreadable, it can be imprinted, or the data can be copied down by hand. And so on. I may think slowly, but I'm a Finnish bank automation veteran, and I know my colleagues!

The UPC/EAN code, on which the Mark of the Beast in Walkabout is based, provides precisely that kind of manual backup--something I hadn't thought of until I read the article Kim sent. The other night, it finally dawned on me, and I added the following to Gregory's discussion with Andy in chapter 15:

“What about a backup system?” I inquired. “With cash and imprintable plastic cards, and with checks, you can always complete a transaction manually, if you lose power or if something isn’t machine-readable. How do you sell stuff where there’s no electricity?”

Andy had this one figured out, too. “Every shop will have a simple battery-powered blacklight as a backup, or as the main system where there’s no automation. In ultraviolet light, you can read off the code in clear, just like you can read it in regular light on every product package if the scanner doesn’t pick it up. Nothing like manual backup!”

That settles the issue of what the chip is for: identification and surveillance. The Mark of the Beast, on the other hand, according to Rev. 13:17, is a payment system identifier, and a chip won't work there.