Barcode

Object Lessons

by Jordan Frith, Ian Bogost (Series Editor), Christopher Schaberg (Series Editor)

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel to how the global economy is managed. But few people likely give them more than a second thought. In a way, the barcode's ordinariness is the ultimate symbol of its success.

However, behind the mundanity of the barcode lies an important history. Barcodes bridged the gap between physical objects and digital databases and paved the way for the contemporary Internet of Things, the idea to connect all devices to the web. They were highly controversial at points, protested by consumer groups and labor unions, and used as a symbol of dystopian capitalism and surveillance in science fiction and art installations. This book tells the story of the barcode's complicated history and examines how an object so crucial to so many parts of our lives became more ignored and more ordinary as it spread throughout the world.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic .

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction

152 pages, Paperback

Published November 2, 2023

Reviews

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at the history and impact of the barcode upon society. Starting out as a way to quickly and accurately input product information into cash registers, its usage would become ubiquitous as a way to track inventory. Despite the rise of the QR code (a two-dimensional form of barcode), the traditional barcode is still widely used due to business inertia.

The book starts with the invention of the cash register as a way for businesses to keep track of items being sold and the money being handled. As the number of transactions grew, the need to automate the cash register became imperative. The barcode was invented and patented as a way to automate number entry, but the technology was not there. It was only when the laser scanner was developed would the technology to scan barcode entries become available.

A committee was set up to decide on what should be used to label products. The barcode that we know was not the first choice: that was a circular code, and the choice of a linear barcode may have been due to some internal politics. With the choice of barcode done, the task was then to get businesses together to decide on a common standard for the data encoded by barcodes.

The usage of barcodes was not inevitable. Consumer and workers unions opposed the use of barcodes, for they reduce user choice (individual pricing as opposed to shelf pricing) and the job losses due to automation. Businesses pushed back, but it would be many years before barcode usage would grow to the point where its use would be ubiquitous and objections would begin to die down. But one group would continue to oppose the use of barcodes, religious groups who believe that barcodes are the 'mark of the devil'.

The book also looks at the appearance and influence of the barcode in society. Films like "The Terminator" would use barcodes as a shorthand for oppression (humans are barcoded by the machines). In politics, the barcode would feature as a political point when George H.W. Bush was portrayed as out of touch with the public due to his reaction to seeing a barcode reader in action (a false portrayal, it would later turn out).

The book closes with a look at QR Codes, which are two-dimensional barcodes. The difference between QR codes and barcodes is what the encoded information represents. Barcodes encode a number which references an item in a global, central database. QR codes directly encode the data and do not have to reference a central database. QR codes were also first developed and popularised in East Asian countries (Japan and China). It would require COVID-19 restrictions for QR codes usage to grow in other parts of the world.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I'm writing this it's still quite early in the year and in my reading challenge, but there's a legitimate chance this book ends up being among my favorite of the year, if not the favorite of the year. I was sort of attracted to this book out of an incredulous curiosity--barcodes are ubiquitous, and surely that ubiquity means there's not actually that much of interest there; at the same time, the ubiquity of barcodes maybe means that there is. And, well, there is a lot of interesting things going on with barcodes. From the debates over their initial design to the curious and understandable backlash to the fascinating ways such backlashes subsided and the technology slowly became invisible, I was rapt from cover to cover in this brief, well-written book. Frith's command of various media theories and ideas from cultural studies is apparent, as is his talent for making these things clear, concise, and applicable to readers as broad concepts and in specific reference to the technology, history, and impact of barcodes. I'll also give Frith some credit as a historian or archaeologist of technology especially in the way he dealt with the ways that various religious, evangelical communities have interacted with barcodes: that was all a treat to read and remain mind-bogglingly interesting to me. I didn't pick this book up as a joke by any means, but I also wasn't seriously prepared for the book to be anywhere near as fascinating as it was. I'll be talking about this one for a long time--my students are certainly going to get an earful about barcodes in the fall.

[David Klingenberger · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you cut out all the repetition, you’d have a 4-page article The New Yorker would never publish.

[Barry Irwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very brief history of the ever prevalent barcode.