U/P Overload

U/P Overload is coming. It has nothing to do with the Upper Peninsula, Michiganders. It's a new phenomenon in which your brain reaches maximum capacity on one tiny part of its memory: Usernames and Passwords. And it's coming for society. Think it's not?

Allow me to remind you the myriad forms U/Ps take: account nicknames, frequent flier #s, credit/debit card #s, that 3-digit code thingy on the back of credit/debit cards, padlock combos, garage or car door codes, social security #, student ID, employee ID, copy machine account code (at my work, it's different for the color and b/w copiers - seriously), any one of your seven email addresses, and don't even get me started on the dreaded PIN! Incidentally, it's not PIN #, because PIN stands for Personal Identification Number. You wouldn't say, "Personal Identification Number Number", would you? Well, maybe if you were playing that drinking game, which I heard about from a friend, where you create a rule that everyone must say the last word of any sentence twice twice. You have PINs for voice mail access on your mobile and work phones, online account access, ATM cards, debit swipe machines, your fuel rewards card, telephone banking, your wife's ATM card ... er, you get the idea.

Website access is clearly the worst offender, though. At work alone I have usernames and passwords, which may or may not be the same, for the following sites: intranet, expense reports, payroll, benefits, half a dozen vendors (all with different 'rules' for password wackiness), logging on to the network, and, of course, logging back on to the network after I step away for five, no, three seconds. "It's for your security!", they say. I also have several files and folders protected by passwords. Again, that's just at work. How many personal online accounts do you access? If you're like me, at least a dozen. But if you're under the age of 22, it's ranging somewhere around 18 Jillion.

"But Steve," you might say if you were inclined to speak out loud to a web log, "don't you use the same username and password for a lot of those?" Well, yes. Sometimes. When they let you. But over here, it's your full email address and an eight character password. Simple enough. However, over there, it's just the username part of the email address followed by a 6-to-10 character password which includes at least one capital letter and no, and I mean NO swear-word symbols. $#%^@! And back on that site, you get to make up a cute account nickname (bobbin4apples), choose a visual queue (I'll take the rubber ducky), and use your keyboard to type the letters that correspond to the numbers on the on-screen keypad. Ahhhhh, the letter 2.

Well, how do we manage all this information without totally losing it, literally AND figuratively? We create cheat sheets, of course! Don't act like you don't have one. A sticky note here and there. A Word document, deftly hidden on our hard drive and not on the shared network - password protected, of course. Or maybe we just make SURE SURE SURE that we use word/number combinations that we just can't forget! Note to everyone: Stop using your oldest child's birth date in 8-digit format as your password. Because then we all know your password. 03131975 isn't fooling anyone!

Fortunately, technology will eventually catch up and provide us with new solutions. Take Apple, for instance. Their Mac computers have an application called "Keychain" which stores U/P combinations for websites and other stuff. Of course, it has an administrative password, for when you need to remember your actual passwords. And kudos for calling it "Keychain", because I can't think of any personal item people lose less than keys. Seriously, what word better completes the sentence, "Honey, I can't find my ____"? Maybe "cell phone", which is also where you keep that notepad entry with all your password reminders. See why U/P Overload is a serious threat?

Enjoy the confusion while you can, I guess. Soon, when we're systematically implanted with RFID tags broadcasting everything about us and our brains are integrated with the World Wide Head, which controls everything - sort of like The Force, but with a wireless network - we won't have the option to use the Spanish word for "orange" followed by "1" as our password any longer. And that, my friends, is a day in which I will click the Log Off button one final time.

Okay, that was a bit melodramatic.

Can't you imagine the conversations of that fully integrated web-human future?

[3 guys, gathered around the holographic copier]

"Hey, do you remember 'logging on to the network'? Man, what a crazy time that was."

"You aren't kidding. I used to log on to the network 5, 6 times a day. Never thought twice about it."

"Did you ever log on to the network, then log off, then try and log in as someone else, just to see what it was like?"

"Only EVERY DAY!"

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Yeah. Hey, I just realized we're inter-men, and we can't think or feel or experience anything on our own anymore."

"Oh @#$%^&"

Cancelled again

Goodbye again to MySpace, this time for good. I recognize and even respect a cultural phenomenon when I see one - COPS, track jackets, "I Brake for Pancakes" suction signs, the Geico lizard - and MySpace certainly is one of the greats. But I haven't cared for at least a year, and the fact that random solicitations and the all important "have you ever"-brand of bulletins are still out there waiting for me was just too much for my conscience. So now I don't have to worry about it.

To the next order of business: based on recent wife, in-law, and friends' conversation history, roughly eleventy-nine people will now cajole me into signing up for Facebook. The main argument "for" Facebook being, "It's sort of eerie - it will suggest friends for you based on your networks, and next thing you know you'll be catching up with Peter from pre-school." First of all, that dude was a narcissist - everything in the world was allegedly his (MINE!) - so why would I care what he's up to? Secondly, I think I do a good job of keeping up with the people I really care about via phone, text, email, blog, and occasionally bumping into them in my house.

Speaking of my house, we are SUCH a 21st Century family. I caught us the other night in the following scenario: Annie was participating in online training on her company laptop, I was on the couch building a new product spreadsheet from my company laptop, Zoey was playing the interactive Littlest Pet Shop game on the Mac, and Preston was downstairs playing Tony Hawk Underground 2 on the PS2. We have up to 4 laptops in the house, a Dell PC, 5 active TVs (3 of them flat screen HD-capable), a Wii, a PS2, an unused PlayStation, all 4 of us have active iPods (plus 2 unused older models), the kids have GameBoys and Nintendo DSs, and we recently obtained four 007-style secret video watches with global GPS and 8-language instant translators! (I made that last one up.) Sometimes, we try and get away from it all by eating dinner together on our holographic, hovering dinner table.

Here's my deal with Facebook: I'm trying to blog more, and I'm pondering if I want to build readership for one of those blogs, and wondering why I would want to do that with the ridiculous amount of material that's out there. It would take more time and mental capacity than I'm currently giving. And I don't know that I want to open a window into the lives of long-gone friends, acquaintances, teammates, classmates, or neighbors. If my wife's recent participation is any indication, catching up with all of them (even if silently, like a virtual voyeur) would take up a lot of that time. Or maybe I don't want to open my own window for all of them. My partial anonymity in this blogosphere is comforting.

What I do know is I'm a sucker for attention and self promotion. Maybe, just maybe, if I receive a flood of comments on this post calling for my entry into the Facebook realm, I might see you there someday soon. For now, I'm going to stop typing and thinking and chuckling at my own jokes and join my wife on the couch to watch some Intervention on A&E. I just thought of a new slogan for that show: "Less depressing than actual addiction, yet half the fun!"