A trip to the local shop in days gone by was a treat for all the senses. The sound of sales being rung up on the old cash register as a talented troupe of fingers danced across the clunky buttons was a delight.
Frank Tuttle asks: "When is a cup of tea, not a cup of tea?"
If ever there were an invention that has changed the way we go about our everyday lives, it surely would have to be bar-codes. Where conceptual categorisation failed, bar-codes clarified. Never a clearer, more concise definition of an object can be offered than that by a bar-code. In many ways, if bar-codes were on our food, maybe there would be fewer things that tasted like chicken. After all, why would you need to be so generic in a description when a perfectly good, unique definition was readily at hand? At least it would be if you could speak the language of bar-code or had a bar-code reader at your disposal.
Certainly I would not proclaim to understand the first thing about how a series of numbers and lines relate to a particular entity, however languages have never been a strong suit of mine. I would always find myself saying: "if 'maison' means 'house' then just say 'house'". In much the same way, the language of bar-code says: "don't say 'mouse' just say P/N X08-72983 PID 58724-576-7805206-1" and of course there is the associated vertical lines varying in thickness that I can't reproduce here at this time.
In a recent review of an asset tracking logistics based system; I came across a curious anomaly with bar-codes. The business had recently installed very smart and subtle bar-code readers at key places around the office in order for staff to "swipe" goods as they were transported around the facility. This seemed like a most ingenious use of this technology.
During my time at the business I afforded myself the time for a regenerative cup of tea. It therefore made perfect sense that as I continued on my wanderings around the office I should make use of the bar-code on the back of my tea bag. Having spent some time in such office environments, I am of course acutely aware of the sensitivity of transporting management provided staff consumables in an inter-departmental fashion. So as I passed the next bar-code reader I "swiped" the bar-code from the tea bag, assuming that the business intelligence would be in place to record the fact that a generic brand tea bag was now leaving the second floor purchasing department and was on its way to the third floor IT department.
A trip to the local shop in days gone by was a treat for all the senses. The sound of sales being rung up on the old cash register as a talented troupe of fingers danced across the clunky buttons was a delight. Some may argue that the monotonous "beep" of goods being flung across a set of lasers in order to decipher the bar-code is a necessary evil if one is to return home before their ice cream decides to merge with the butter.
I found myself lost in this thought of bells ringing and machines beeping as the tea bag infected bar-code reader struggled to understand what had just been inflicted on it. Now if I could just find my four-rotor Enigma encoder.
Submitted by Frank on September 30, 2005.
