You didn’t used to have to have a password to conduct your
daily life. I remember you had to
have a combination for the lock on your gym locker for P.E., and for the lock
on your bicycle if you didn’t want it to get stolen. You also had to have a key for the front door of your
house. Oh, and when you got older
you needed a key for the car, but as well as starting your car, it also
unlocked the car door. But that
was about it. Life was as simple
as that. You didn’t need to
protect your bank account, your social networking sites, your credit card
information or your identity.
But it’s not like that anymore. It hasn’t been that way for a long time. Now you have to have a password for
anything you try and do; and let’s face it, a good percentage of our lives are
conducted online, on a laptop or on a smartphone. But just because the
phone is smarter than we are doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s really all
that smart. After
all, some of us are not so
smart. If we were we’d probably not be conducting our lives on a
smartphone, an ipad, or a laptop where the government can monitor our affairs
so easily. We’d probably be out
there doing our business in person, actually interacting with other people and
places where we don’t need a password, just a drivers license so somebody can
look at our picture. It does,
however, occur to me that a smartphone is smart enough to ask us for a password, and that’s where I begin to
feel inferior, and discouraged. I
can never seem to remember mine, any of my passwords really, and sometimes I
wish the damn phone, or the website, or whatever, would just forget to ask
me.
Now I’m not trying to disparage anybody, or the way of life
that has evolved so conspicuously around us, but I can’t help being dispirited
by all the security it requires of us to get through a typical day these
days. I mean I need a password to
log into my email account just to see if somebody has something nasty to say
about something I’ve written.
I don’t need a password to open my mailbox at the foot of my
driveway.
And I like that better.
