The Beach of the Future!

This is a new one! I have seen many thoughts on future.. but this New Jersey town (Ocean City) is taking the current technology to a .. well .. new frontier! Here is how the "Beach of the Future" will look like:

At the beach of the future, high tide will meet high tech. Visitors will wear wristbands that automatically debit their bank accounts or credit cards to pay for beach access, food and parking. Garbage cans will e-mail cleanup crews when they’re ready to be emptied.

And people won’t even think about trying to sneak in: Beach checkers could scan the sands with handheld devices and instantly know who didn’t pay.

Ocean City is working on using the Wi-Fi and RFID technology to cut costs and make it easier for them to track the delinquent users of the beach!

This southern New Jersey city plans to deliver a variety of public services and Internet access using radio-frequency identification chips and Wi-Fi wireless technology. The $3 million project is expected to be finished by next summer.

Beach badges, those plastic or cloth scourges of the Jersey shore could become a thing of the past. The beach access fees – $5 per day, $10 for a week, or $20 for the entire summer – will remain.

"This is the future," said Karen Kinloch, a summer resident. "It’s where we’re at right now. It’s probably overdue. It’s kind of antiquated to take a piece of plastic and pin it to your swimsuit."