IMAGINE a shopping world where everything in the supermarket acts as if it actually knows you and waves its imaginary arms, screaming: “Me, me. Take me!”.

In this world, the shelves are always full and waiting, just for you.

Your shopping trolley knows who you are, too, and it also knows that just down the aisle (“Here,” the cart says, “take a look at this little map”) is a wonderful bottle of wine which, according to your previous buying record, you’re just going to love.

And when you follow the simple map on your trolley’s plasma touchscreen, there it is, a cheeky little claret, vintage 2002. Another screen on the shelf says hello and tells you who made the wine and surprises you with a list of recipes that would be just dandy with it. Smiling, you pick up the bottle and are tickled pink when an unseen projector above your head flashes up an image of a French cheese that would complement your claret perfectly.

And seeing as it’s you buying the wine, Mrs Smith, you can have it at a discount! But that’s not all. There are clothes in your store. You pick up a blouse but don’t have time to try it on. Fear not. Your choice has been noticed by a nifty piece of technology that flashes up an image of you wearing it — and which goes on to suggest a matching skirt, jacket, shoes. You simply must take it.

You have already chosen a microwaveable meal that will be able to talk to your smart microwave oven when you get home so you don’t have to burden yourself with reading the cooking instructions. It’s the same with the blouse you bought; it can tell your washing machine the temperature at which it should be washed (and the washing machine can tell if you’ve accidentally put a blue sock in with it because that’s tagged, too). And all the other goodies that are destined for your fridge, well, when they run out, your good-buddy icebox will simply send a message to the supermarket telling it you need more.

You suddenly realise that the fun is about to end; you’re going to have to queue with all the other Smiths at the checkout. With this kind of convenience (not to mention fun), the lines are bound to be long and tedious. But no. You simply walk out of the store and all your items wave a cheery electronic bye bye and your bank account is instantly and accurately debited.

Depending on your point of view, this is a Utopian world of shopping bliss, or a dystopian nightmare in which your buying habits and everything you choose follow you around to be scrutinised, analysed and exploited.

In some respects, this buying experience is some years down the line. In others, the technology is here now and is being tried out at an experimental supermarket in Germany. In both cases, however, there are issues that must be discussed today, issues that could have a vital impact on supermarket profitability, retailing prices and customer privacy at a time when, unbeknown to most consumers, the technology is about to explode on to the high street.

Welcome to the world of RFID — radio frequency identification. It’s a boring little acronym but one that you would do well to understand before it begins to intrude on every single aspect of your life.

There is nothing particularly new about RFID. It has been used for decades by, for example, fighter pilots to identify which aircraft are friend and which are foe. Its application today, however, uses technology that reads large amounts of information on a microchip only a hair’s breadth bigger than a grain of sand.

These are now being used in tags that are similar to barcode labels and carry out much the same function — identifying products. However, whereas barcodes simply tell you that an item is, say, a tin of peas, RFID tags have a unique number and can tell you exactly WHICH tin of peas. And whereas barcodes are read by a laser beam, RFID tags contain tiny antenna loops that communicate by radio waves when contacted by an RFID reader (a transmitter/receiver.) They also have the capacity to hold much more information than simply price and product. For example, your new biometric British passport will contain RFID technology that will hold your name, age, place of birth, your picture and one other biometric identifier, possibly an image of your retina.

Your average supermarket RFID tag won’t contain any data about you — it will have only the unique identifier number of the product you bought. But once sent back to the supermarket’s database, you and all the products you bought can be linked and used to build up an incredibly detailed picture of you and your buying habits.