Tom Yager, a columnist at InfoWorld.com, recently wrote a piece about RFID called "RFID is stupid."

His reasoning: an RFID tag is "incapable of learning, Logging, sensing the world around it."

Being a fan of Tom's columns on other topics, I wrote him a polite email pointing out that he was wrong.

Trying to compare RFID tags and sensors is like comparing apples and oranges. To say that something makes a yucky-tasting orange does not prove a useful point, if in fact you are talking about an apple. Fruit can fall short on all the attributes on which we measure an orange, and still make an awesome apple.

For example, you may not be able to peel an apple like an orange, with your fingers. Does that make the apple defective? No, of course not. We simply do not expect apples to be peelable with your fingers. We judge them by different criteria.

Aside from making the mistake of comparing two technologies that were designed for entirely different purposes, Tom's article also displays a lack of understanding of the real power of RFID from a business perspective.

The real power of RFID comes from better visibility, control and productivity -- getting the right things to the right places at the right time.

Over the past decade, businesses (not to mention the entire U.S. economy) have become dramatically more productive. It is due to one thing: computing technology.

In the coming decade, RFID has the power to propel us to an even higher level of productivity. When the advances of computing technology gained over the past decade are combined with the identification capability of RFID in the coming decade, together they will be a powerful force.

Only when businesses know exactly what they have and where it is located in real time, can they get it to the right place on time. RFID will give businesses a level of insight into and control over their supply chains, with real time accuracy, that is unlike any they have experienced in the past.

It does not matter whether RFID has the capability to pick up and sense environmental detail, like a sensor. That has nothing to do with the nature of its power to increase business productivity. RFID is about "identifying" not about "sensing."

Luckily I am not the only one who called Tom out on his column. So did one of his co-columnists at InfoWorld, in a piece entitled "RFID is smarter than some columnists think."