MSD

Paranoia Weekly
Volume 0

The Sinister Side of Barcodes
or
The Devil in Devil's Food Cake is Outside of the Box

History

Barcodes are such an integral part of life that it's hard to imagine life without them. Everything you buy has one, whether it's in a box, bag, or bubble. Seems innocent enough, doesn't it? A convenient system that has come a long way since it was invented at Drexel Institute of Technologyin 1948. Patented in 1952, the barcode was pretty much forgotten until 1969, when the project was revived. Some supermarkets started using it in 1974, but it was not widespread.

Jump ahead to 1981; the system was formally adopted by the Department of Defense, and a universal standard was put in place. All products sold to the military were required to have a UPC on them, and vendors complied.


The Strange Part
Why was the military so enthusiastic about pushing universal acceptance for barcodes? Other coding systems would have been more convenient, yet the military's attention led to the development that put barcodes on 95% of what is sold in the US and Western Europe.


The Usual Suspects
Satan:

The Unusual Suspects
Aliens:
The Government is secretly allied with aliens who want a way to track us. The barcode system is their invention and can be easily tattooed onto the skin. It can be combined with a microchip to store vast amounts of information.


Most Convincing Evidence
Look back at those bible passages from The Book of Revelations. Now look at any sort of item you have wiht you that has a UPC code on it. There are 12 numbers, separated by "guard bars." There are two thin bars at the beginning, two thin bars in the middle, and the pattern is repeated again at the end. Two thin bars are the number 6 in a right-hand parity barcode. Three sixes, and a right-hand parity. Look up at the three passages again.

The mark of the beast (666,) on the right hand (the guard bars are only equal to six if the barcode is right-hand parity,) and "no one would be able to buy or to sell, unless he has that mark, the name of the beast or the number of his name."


Sceptically Speaking
It's a system for identifying products. There's bound to be some sort of coincidence involved. Occam's razor intervenes, and we can assume that to call this the work of the Devil or Little grey men is overcomplicating it.


There you have it. After some discussion, I'll give you a few choices for what you want to see in the next issue of Paranoia Weekly.

Redlemon

Or, Snopes on Bar Codes and 666.

Lunchbox7

Cool reasoning. I loved it.

telekinetic

Hmm...I figured this thread would be about RF tags and privacy issues. Personally, I want to be able to track all of my belongings/friends by RF tags on a palm pilot...answering my common question "now where the fuck did I put my keys...."

__________________
twisted no more

bacon_masta

interesting article, is it in the tilted magazine? really cool, if not it should be

MSD

Well, I plan to change the format and do more research the content This was mostly a test run, to see how people reacted. I'm glad you like it.


I realize that it's not identical, but I have had a scanner mistake the center guard bar for a 6. Just my 2 cents.