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. They're everywhere
and 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, their "ordinariness" is the ultimate symbol of
their success. After all, barcodes have remained mostly unchanged
(except for a few exceptions like QR Codes) for the last 50 years, and
yet billions of barcodes are still scanned each day. However, behind the
mundanity of the barcode lies an important, interesting, and engaging
history.
Barcodes are objects that bridged the gap between physical objects and
digital databases and helped pave the way for the contemporary Internet
of Things. They were highly controversial at points and protested by
consumer groups and labor unions. Barcodes were widely deployed 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.