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The End of Identity

01/12/2011|Matt "Steerpike" Sakey|Ephemera2
Home » Home » Ephemera » The End of Identity
The End of Identity

We’re getting all academic around here! Good buddy, all-around stud and Celebrity Guest Editor Ben Hoyt of 47Games pointed me to the yonder video of his friend professor Jeremy Douglass of UCSD giving what I can only describe as a really fascinating lecture on passwords. Sound boring? Sound pointless? Wrong! Not only is Dr. Douglass a great speaker, but he’s not just talking about how passwords should have symbols and capital letters. He’s talking about what they mean, and how they’re inherently alien to the human method of cognition. Let your fingers do the clicking to see more.

This is a 34 minute video, so give yourself some time (I recommend any period when you’re at the office and have headphones).

The revelation that passwords are becoming identity, and that identity is therefore becoming something that’s not innately natural to the human brain, is both intriguing and scary. It’s like the Neverending Story line – “do I understand you right? Your body is this melody? What if you should cease to sing? Would you cease to be?”

As passwords grow ever more prevalent in our society, they are rapidly co-opting other forms of identification. Imagine a day in the far future when a person forgets their Password (something our brains are practically programmed to do). It would almost be like losing yourself altogether, because without that one key to identify you, what else is there?

Send an email to the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.

07/18/2012 Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

About the author

Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

Tap-Repeatedly Overlord Steerpike is a games industry journalist and consultant. His earliest memories are of video games, and hopes his last memories will be of them as well. He’s a featured monthly columnist with the International Game Developers Association, and is internationally published in an assortment of dull e-Learning texts and less dull gaming publications. He also lectures on games at various universities.

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2 Responses to The End of Identity

  • Ajax19 01/12/2011

    After hearing your wireless password, I agree with him: it is “inherently alien to the human method of cognition.” 

    My passwords, on the other hand, are 100% in-line with my human method of cognition.  It’s my general method of remembering a great number of things.

  • Richard Ellicott 02/05/2011

    great reccomend mate, adding your blog to my list of regular reads, keep with the inteligent/indie/gaming/stuff i’m interested in formulae 🙂

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