“Barcode” by Dr. Jordan Frith
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.
Purchase “Barcode” HERE!
Jordan Frith (he/him) is the Pearce Professor of Professional Communication at Clemson University. His primary research focuses on technical communication, mobile communication, social media, and communication infrastructures, and he is the author of 5 books and numerous public-facing articles in popular venues such as Slate, Salon, and The Conversation. His work is inherently interdisciplinary, and he has also published 40+ academic articles in a variety of disciplines, including technical communication, communication studies, media studies, and geography. His 2019 book A Billion Little Pieces was published as part of MIT Press’s Infrastructure series, and his newest book—Barcode—was published in November 2023 as part of the highly competitive Object Lessons’ series. In addition to his research, Dr. Frith is the editor-in-chief of the Association of Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Communication Design Quarterly and serves on the executive board of multiple disciplinary organizations. You can learn more about him and access the full text of many of his publications on his website.
