A Guy Walks Into a Barcode

In the last few decades, we’ve seen plenty of technologies go from the back of a napkin to total ubiquity. And perhaps none of those technologies is more ubiquitous than the humble UPC—the Universal Bar Product Code (better known by its informal sobriquet: The Bar Code). “In this half century, the barcode has become the plumbing of global capitalism—revolutionary, pervasive, forgettable. More kinds of scannable codes have arrived since the ’70s, but the linear UPC barcode is on the packaging of most consumer products you get from every store, grocery or otherwise, brick-and-mortar or online. It is among the greatest, most consequential inventions in American history. How did we get stadium-size supermarkets, Costcos, and Amazon? … Barcodes are on books, TVs, wine bottles, spatulas, and underwear. There are barcode tattoos, barcode conspiracy theories, barcode presidential scandals, and buildings on four continents designed to resemble barcodes.” But will the bar code maintain its position atop (or a bottom) the world’s packages, or will the late blooming QR code or some other young upstart take its place? Fifty years after its first commercial use on a pack of Juicy Fruit Gum, Saahil Desai offers today’s best article the topic, bar none, in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Barcode Engineered Its Own Downfall.

+ The Conversation: How we almost ended up with a bull’s-eye bar code. (Would’ve been huge for Target.)