Good Morning.
A password used to get you into a club that held secret meetings in someone's garage or maybe a tree house. I never belonged to such a clandestine organization because it was the province of freckle-faced, rude little boys with cap guns and sling shots. Girls, in freshly pressed uniforms and felt berets, were members of Brownie troops that met in a church basement. They made carnations out of Kleenex, sold cookies, and helped old people cross the street. They did not have pierced ears and paint their toe nails blue.
Today a password is associated with a computer, a still incomprehensible item that was in the process of being developed when kids were putting playing cards in their bicycle spokes for an odd clicking sound and throwing the morning paper in the bushes. That was also a boy thing; girls went roller skating and had tea parties with visiting aunts and grandmothers, none of whom needed a password to do anything.
Not so today. A password is as essential to everyday living as electricity and running water. It's supposed to be a combination of letters, numerals, and a punctuation mark that cannot be hacked by yucky people down the street or another continent. It's wise not to use something like a house number or a birthday. When you select a password, a cyber goblin will tell you if it's too weak, another way to make a technically illiterate person feel even more inadequate. I have a list in my desk drawer of my passwords and they are ridiculous. They refer to former teachers, pieces of furniture, fond memories, and physical afflictions. I have a password to access my bank accounts, purchase groceries on-line, communicate with my physician and get test results, comment on newspaper articles, critique restaurants, and pay my insurance and utilities. I can take care of my annual car registration fee, but I cannot renew my driver's license; I have to go to the DMV in person to be publicly humiliated by a photographer who should be in another line of work.
A password is designed to protect one's privacy, but in truth it screams, silently of course, that privacy is an obsolete concept in today's world. A password is right up there with the x-ray machines at the airport and the hotel cards that have replaced keys that are apparently too easy to duplicate. It's the odd noises to get into a car and lock it up and the date of birth and last four social security numbers, followed by the pound sign, that must be provided to a robotic voice on the telephone. It's the credit card and the automatic deduction. It has nothing to do with paying in cash or talking to an actual human being about an item that was lost in the mail after not being purchased at a store that used to be physically inhabited.
The idea that we're getting to the point where we read the printed word only on a screen disturbs me. I have books all over my house and like the look and the feel of them. I remember going to the library every Wednesday night, a branch that was located, ironically now that I think about it, in Mark Twain's house. I remember looking up words in a dictionary first written by Noah Webster who had a home not far away. I recall seeing people reading a newspaper or a novel on park benches and under beach umbrellas. Now we have lap tops and smart phones everywhere - in coffee houses, on airplanes, in hospital rooms - with material that must be accessed with a password known only to the person who created it along with a club of
Russians, Chinese, and probably the CIA.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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