UPC Barcodes

It's hard to remember a world without barcodes. Yet UPC barcodes have only been around for a little over 25 years. Standing for Universal Product Code, UPC barcodes are the most common form used in the UK and America. They've made shopping easier, they've made fundamentalist Christians suspicious, they've made conspiracy theorists nervous. Those little black lines already have their own folklore.

And for all their handiness, anything which increases speed and ease has side-effects. Barcode technology has nurtured shopping malls and supermarkets and helped to stifle those small shops of yesteryear where you had to chat as you bought your groceries. They have changed a part of our world and set a precedent for large-scale computerized identification processes which may one day become a much larger part of it. Is that a good thing? Well, let's concentrate on more practical issues for a while: barcode equipment itself - how it works and where to get hold of it.

UPC Barcodes Decoded and Explained

The Universal Product Code is made up of two sets of numbers - the Manufacturer's Code and the Product Code. Each number in turn is expressed as a series of black and white bars (there's a UPC barcodes system for different kinds of goods, too - it's necessarily quite complicated). A scanner is swept over it and the information contained in the code is processed by computer. The barcode identifies the product (and can only be read one way by the scanner) but not the price - that's kept on the store's database. The numbers below the bars are for people's benefit, and are not read by the computer.

If you're looking to buy barcode technology, a lot is available over the internet. All you have to do is look for it. Companies like National Barcode (www.nationalbarcode.com) provide scanners (fixed and hand held), label printers, decoders and readers, whole barcode systems from a variety of manufactures (National Barcode also have a newsletter you can sign up for). As with other goods, deals can be available on the internet which you won't find from conventional suppliers. There's advice on this site on what's available and where to get it, as well as more detailed information on how it all actually works.

And to return, finally, to the speculations with which we started. Like all tools, most technology is good or bad depending on how it's used. There are conceivable applications for UK barcoding which could infringe civil rights. It's true that everything seems to be a number these days. Perhaps there is an undertone of this awareness in the fundamentalist fears that all barcodes contain the 'mark' without which no-one will be able to buy or sell. Whatever you think about that (if anything), there are lots of people in the world who suffer much more obvious evils and deprivations of freedom. That's something worth thinking about while shopping.