Digithink No. 3: Dispensing wisdom?

You know those universal soda dispensers at restaurants that give out different drinks? Like lemonade, cola and water? Well, now they come with a new feature: RFID-tagged cups (Radio Frequency Identification tags). They not only lock out non-enabled cups, enabled cups are disabled after each day (for say reusable collector cups), they have timed lockouts for refills, and they limit the volume  output of the machine. And all of this is networked and shared with other machines.

Unlike other digithink inventions, these cups are a ploy to make a profit by making our lives more inconvenient and more expensive.

For the curious or the skeptical, check it out validfill.com/about.

NANCY GERTH

Sagle