It started as a business card
I got an NFC ring for a simple reason: I was tired of fumbling with business cards at events. You tap the ring to someone’s phone, a page opens, and they’ve got my site, my Substack, and my LinkedIn. Clean. A little stylish. Nobody loses a card in their jacket pocket.
That was the whole idea. It worked, and that should have been the end of the story.
Then it became a party trick
It wasn’t. A few weeks later I was out with friends, and the ring came out for a completely different reason. Nobody needed my contact info. They wanted to see the t-shirts. So I swapped the link, and suddenly the same tap that said “here’s my consulting practice” was saying “look at this ridiculous shirt.”
Same ring. Same gesture. Totally different job. And it took me about ten seconds to change it.
The ring was never the smart part
That’s when it clicked. The ring itself doesn’t do anything. It’s a pointer. It’s exactly as smart as whatever sits at the other end of the link, and for most of us, that’s a static page that says the same thing to everyone, every time.
The ring is only as smart as the link behind it. So what happens when the link gets smart?
For years, that’s where the idea stopped. A tap opens a page. Fine. But now you can put an AI system behind that link, one that knows who’s tapping, what’s happening, and what should happen next. The tap stops being a way to show someone something and becomes a way to start something.
Ring plus AI plus a plain old URL. That’s not a business card anymore. That’s a doorway.
Field trip morning
Here’s what that looks like in real life.
It’s 8:05 on field trip day. The school drop-off line is the usual chaos: backpacks, half-eaten waffles, a kid who forgot his lunch. Every year, there’s a stack of permission slips that never came home, or came home and lived in the bottom of a backpack for two weeks.
This year, the teacher is standing at the door with a ring on her finger. A parent walks up and taps their phone to it. Boop.
The permission slip opens with their kid’s name already on it. They sign with a thumb. Done. They’re back on the sidewalk before the next parent reaches the door.
That’s the part the parent sees. Here’s the part they don’t.
Behind that tap, the system checks the kid off the trip list. It notices the note about a peanut allergy and sends it to the chaperone riding that bus. It sees that three families still haven’t signed and sends each of them a gentle nudge before the bus leaves at 9:00. By the time the teacher gets back to her classroom, the paperwork is just... finished.
No clipboard. No app download. No chasing parents in the hallway. One tap, and everything behind it just happens.
Sky’s the limit
What gets me is that none of the pieces here are new. NFC has been around forever. Links are the oldest thing on the web. What’s new is that the thing at the end of the link can now think a little.
So the ring I bought to replace business cards turned into a party trick, and now it might be the simplest front door to a whole system. I have no idea what it becomes next.
Which, honestly, is the fun part.
What’s the most annoying piece of paper in your week? I’d bet it could be a boop.