Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is embedded in everything from clothing to the microchips injected into pets. The tags wirelessly transmit data and are used to sort billions of objects and bodies.

Jordan Frith, associate professor of technical communication, explores its social impact in A Billion Little Pieces: RFID and Infrastructures of Identification (Cambridge: MIT Press).

"I got inspired to look beneath the surface of things to find out how objects worked and how RFID is embedded inside other things and then links them to larger infrastructures," he says.