Bar Code Tattoo

Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn is a look at the future of corporations - when one of them has bought all of the others and is on its way to controlling the world.

In 2025, the President of the US is a puppet for AgroGlobal, the corporation that owns patents to virtually all food grown on the planet. Their latest plan - already in place in China, Japan, and Europe - is to have people get a bar code tattooed on their wrist. The code is attacked to a file with all information about you.

The idea is that it would be easier than carrying ID and credit cards, medical files would be instantly available, etc... In reality it would not only allow AgroGlobal/the government to track you every move, and there more in the file than the public is aware of...

When some people seem to go crazy trying to remove the tattoo from their arms, Kayla is sure she does not want one. With her seventeenth birthday a few weeks away, she will be pressured to get one by almost everyone around her - except for a small group of students at school who refused to get a tattoo. Will they be able to resist? What will they do when the law making it mandatory is passed?

This book looks at many of today's technologies and trends and follows them to a dystopian future where personal freedoms are still being taken away from citizens of the US. Interestingly enough, the Nazi system of tattooing Jews and other prisoners in WWII was only mentioned once.

Weyn, Suzanne. (2004). Bar Code Tattoo. New York: Point.