Commodities and Codes
Prior to this exercise you should have read pp 52-53 on “commodity chains” in the Knox/Marston textbook.
With this exercise we look at how we are connected to a machine-readable world.
Commodity Chains
Take a commodity you have recently bought (a t-shirt, shoes, a cup of coffee, a mobile phone) and trace where components were produced and put together. Is your product: (i) a producer-driven commodity chain, (ii) a consumer-driven commodity chain, or (iii) a marketing-driven commodity chain? Does your product have a bar-code — or a Universal Product Code (UPC) code — attached to it? If so, what did a computer search on that code tell you about it? What else did you sleuth about your product? Where did the basic components/ingredients of your commodity originate? Where were they processes/manufactured? Where were they put
together? How were they transported here? Create a map of the commodity chains that are linked to this product.
Codes of Life
Take two things from your wallet and/or purse, which have codes on them. These might be number codes, magnetic codes, bar-codes, laser codes, UPC codes or combinations of these codes. Your SDSU card, for example, has 11 different codes on it. Now, think about the ways codes relate the following: (i) something you have, (ii) something you know, and (iii) something you are. Is there anything in these codes that attaches you to something you do not want to be attached to?
Answer the following questions in a 550 word essay (imbed your commodity chain map in this document before submitting it to Turnitin).
The map you produced suggests a way that you are connected to a larger world order. From what heard about earlier in class and from what you’ve read in the text, what kind of world order is this? What types of codes are inscribed in this product? What do those codes do? What types of personal information would the producers of this product be interested in collecting from you? Why?
We as individuals are tied to machine-readable codes and these are increasingly global in their scope, they last forever (or are, at least, extremely difficult to change), and they mark us in a particular way. What do the machine readable codes in your wallet and/or purse say about you as a person? How might a government use this information? How might a corporation use this information? How might a university use this information?