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Let the flames and derision roll in, we're ready. You can read all about Steve Wozniak's wireless tracking system at the New York Times. And if you don't know where your newspaper is, perhaps you're a ready customer for the new service, set to go public next year. For only a few hundred dollars worth of gear, you can wirelessly track your kids, pets, and personal belongings over a two-mile-wide radius, a control freak's dream.

Do you think this is a good thing? We don't. When we first heard that Apple co-founder Wozniak was working on a secret embedded wireless technology, our "uh-oh" warning light went on. And when we read about "WozNet" today, the siren sounded loud and long. No, we don't think this technology is a good idea. The last thing that this society needs is more control. Probably most of our readers will disagree and call us paranoid, but we deeply regret this news:

Mr. Wozniak described WozNet as a simple and inexpensive wireless network that uses radio signals and global positioning satellite data to keep track of a cluster of inexpensive tags within a one- or two-mile radius of each base station. WozNet, he said, will include a home-base station that has the ability to track the location of dozens or even hundreds of small wireless devices that can be attached to people, pets or property. The tags expected to cost less than $25 each to produce will be able to generate alerts, notifying the owner by phone or e-mail message when a child arrives at school, a dog leaves the yard or a car leaves the parking lot.

If you can't let your kids,your pets, or your daffy great-aunt out of your sight without worrying about where they are and think a computer-assisted wireless tracking system is a good idea, heaven help you, is all this editor can say. Yes, that's somewhat harsh, and no doubt many of you will email us with hypothetical examples of the good uses to which this technology will be put. We're sure there are thousands of potentially lifesaving and tragedy-averting applications, make no mistake about it. But the primary motivation for using these tags will not be curiosity but fear, which indicates to us a willingness to rely on artificial systems instead of developing human intuition and expanding one's own powers of awareness.

Our position remains, therefore, more trust, less tracking. Besides the psychological and emotional toll the use of this surveillance technology (for that's what it is) will take on people who mix it into their family life, we consider this a regrettable waste of resources and a thoughtless insertion of yet more electromagnetic radiation into our everyday environment. Trust your children, take care of your pets, and trust your neighbors to do the same: the only true security is internal, after all, and life is not empirical.

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