Near Field Communication…

The intuitive link between consumer devices
In a room full of people, you would walk across the room to have a private conversation with someone, rather than shouting across it so that everyone could hear. Near Field Communication (NFC) uses the same principle to link electronic devices. It enables the user to exchange all kinds of information, securely, simply by bringing two devices close together. Its short-range interaction over a few centimeters greatly simplifies the whole issue of identification, as there is less confusion when devices can only "hear" their immediate neighbors.

In Charles Stross’ Accelarando!, there are thousands of AI civilizations that were born and died clustered around their own little corner of star systems.  Their limiting functions and the ultimate cause of their demise had to do with bandwidth and an unwillingness to venture from the rich high bandwidth regions at the center of their known volumes farther out into space where channels are narrowed and signal/response times lengthen.  Dumb AIs.  No pioneer spirit.  (On the other hand there are in Stross’ fictional universe entire galaxies pulsing with pure intelligence and working on problems like hacking Planck’s constant, so there is a range of success stories in the book, AI-wise.)

And so we stumble forward in the noughtie decade of the 21st century addressing simple problems like contactless identification and the connectivity gap, looking for that moment where I can touch your forehead with mine and be reminded to take out the garbage, pick up some dogfood on the way home, and call the Smiths to let them know we’ll be there around eight.

It’s interesting that NFC is as much an urban architectural solution set as it is an IT confabulation of tools and techniques.