Forwarded-by: Rob Mayoff <mayoff@dqd.com>
Forwarded-by: Sheppard <xie@netcom.com>
The U.S. Postal Service is conducting national tests of a system that
tracks mail by means of tiny radio transmitters placed inside
ordinary-size letters. The radios periodically turn themselves on and
listen for a signal from a sensor; if they hear a sensor they tell it
information about their origin, current location, and ultimate
destination. The project manager says that, through its ability to
pinpoint delivery bottlenecks, the system "shows us very interesting
processing things that had been invisible before. What we have here is a
system that conveys ownership of problems." (New York Times 31 May 98)