If you think about basically everyone not in just America but the world. Perhaps the symbol that most of us know or encounter

the most often on a daily basis

is not like a Nike symbol or a Coke symbol

or literally anything else. It's a barcode. or a

barcode barcode. A barcode.

That little rectangle of black and white stripes

that you find on pretty much every single product,

from lawn chairs to insulin to

flaming hot cheetos. You point a scanner at it and it gives you the basic

information about the product. Are these honeynaught cherios or regular cheerios?

And how much do they cost? It's such an old technology that it's not really that exciting anymore.

In fact, it's just part of the invisible architecture of everyday life, which makes it exactly the

kind of thing that editor Sahel Desai notices.

It's familiar in that sense, both geographically over time right like the barcode

hasn't changed really in 50 years it's so deeply familiar in that way I find a

comfort in that and I think that's that's

sort of beautiful to me.

I'm Hanarossin. This is Radio Atlantic. Once upon a time, you would go to a

grocery store and a cashier would manually key in the price of an item. Cashiers who could do this quickly were so prized that in 1964, the winner of International Checker of the year won a Mink Stoll and a trip to Hawaii.

Then came this new thing, the barcode, which didn't just change how cashiers did their jobs.

It remade the whole American economy and eventually us, the consumers. So, what on earth got you interested in the barcode in the barcode in the first place?

So I am part of this grocery co-op in my neighborhood in Brooklyn and

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