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Series: Object Lessons
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Ideal for readers interested in cultural studies, technology history, and those curious about the ordinary objects shaping our digital world. Suitable for fans of the Object Lessons series and general readers seeking thought-provoking nonfiction.
"arcodes are one of the most ignored yet impactful objects of the last fifty years, and they have a much more interesting and controversial history than most people realize"--
Barcodes are one of the most ignored yet impactful objects of the last fifty years, and they have a much more interesting and controversial history than most people realize.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
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 labour 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.
Series: Object Lessons
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Bicycle
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle promises to transform our lives and the world we live in, yet its time seems always yet-to-come or long-gone-by. Bicycle by...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Rust
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. It’s happening all the time, all around us. We cover it up. We ignore it. Rust takes on the many meanings of this oxidised substance, showing how technology bleeds into biology and ecology. Jean-Michel Rabaté combines art, science, and autobiography to share his...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Bookshelf
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Every shelf is different, and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf can creak with character in a bohemian coffee shop, while another can groan with gravitas in the Library of Congress. Bookshelf by writer and historian Lydia Pyne explores these differences...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Burger
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The burger, long the All-American meal, is undergoing an identity crisis. From its shifting place in popular culture to efforts by investors such as Bill Gates to create the non-animal burger that can feed the world, the burger’s identity has become as malleable...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Smokers, survivalists, teenagers, collectors… The cigarette lighter is a charged, complex, yet often entirely disposable object that moves across these various groups of people, acquiring and emitting different meanings while always supplying its primary function, that of ignition. While the lighter may seem...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Earth
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In Earth, a planetary scientist and a literary humanist explore what happens when we think of the Earth as an object viewable from space. As a “blue marble,” “a blue pale dot,” or, as Chaucer described it, “this litel spot of erthe,” the...Paperback$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Egg
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This book is about a strange object—strange in part because it is something that we all have been, and that many of us eat. Nicole Walker's Egg relishes in sharp juxtapositions of seemingly fanciful or repellent topics, so that reproductive science and gustatory...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Eye Chart
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Desert nomads tested their vision by distinguishing a pair of stars. But we have since created more disquieting ways to test the strength of the eyes. Reading the eye chart is an exercise in failure, since it only gets interesting when you cannot...Paperback$2099Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
High Heel
Best Fifteen Books of March 2019, Refinery29Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, Paste Magazine Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Fetishized, demonized, celebrated, and outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Hood
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. We all wear hoods: the Grim Reaper, Red Riding Hood, torturers, executioners and the executed, athletes, labourers, anarchists, rappers, babies in onesies, and anyone who’s ever grabbed a hoodie on a chilly day. Alison Kinney’s Hood explores the material and symbolic vibrancy of...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Jet Lag
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Jet lag is a momentary condition resulting from the human body and its inner clock being pitched against the time-leaping effects of modern aviation. But more than that, it is a situation that explains time, technology, and the human body. Jet lag epitomises...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Mushroom
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. They are the things we step on without noticing and the largest organisms on Earth. They are symbols of inexplicable growth and excruciating misery. They are grouped with plants, but they behave more like animals. In their inscrutability, mushrooms are wondrous organisms. The...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Jordan Frith’s storytelling transforms a technical subject into a lively human narrative. The book offers insightful cultural, political, and social analysis that will change how readers perceive barcodes. Torie Bosch praises it as a page-turner that makes the reader eager to discuss barcodes.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781501399916
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 02 November 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 16.0mm
Width: 120.0mm
Height: 164.0mm
Weight: 142g
Pages: 152
About the Author
Jordan Frith is Pearce Professor of Professional Communication, Clemson University, USA. He is the author of five books, including A Billion Little Pieces: RFID and Infrastructures of Identification (2019) and Smartphones as Locative Media (2015).
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