imran*ali

With the recent spate of seaborne piracy in the Horn of Africa, it’s not surprise that cargo companies are taking technological measures to enhance the security of their goods.

Korea’s Hyundai Merchant Marine is now offering to supply the location of its cargo, in real time, by SMS – from the point at which a container is loaded until its delivery to the final recipient. In essence, this is the embodiment of Bruce Sterling’s Spimes – devices that through pervasive GPS and RFID, can track its history of use an dinteract with the world.

Hyundai’s system displaces email and fax communication which would ordinarily signal the status of an item.

Ultimately, insurance companies might insist on the ‘trackability’ of shipped goods in order to mitigate their own risks of piracy. Of course, Somali pirates are just as likely to employ this service against itself, by bribing port authority officials to signal the departure time of boats to pirates-in-waiting…