password

Description

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Where does a password end and an identity begin? A person might be more than his chosen ten-character combination, but does a bank know that? Or an email provider? What’s an ‘identity theft’ in the digital age if not the unauthorized use of a password? In untangling the histories, cultural contexts and philosophies of the password, Martin Paul Eve explores how ‘what we know’ became ‘who we are’, revealing how the modern notion of identity has been shaped by the password. Ranging from ancient Rome and the ‘watchwords’ of military encampments, through the three-factor authentication systems of Harry Potter and up to the biometric scanner in the iPhone, Password makes a timely and important contribution to our understanding of the words, phrases and special characters that determine our belonging and, often, our being. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Passwords and their limits Chapter 1 Who Goes There?’: Militaries, Mortality and Passwords Passwords, militaries and classical civilizations Enigma: Complexity, calculation, making and breaking Disclosure, militaries and the law Chapter 2 Special Characters: Passwords in Literature and Religion Passwords, myth and magic Harry Potter and the two-factor authentication device The Word Chapter 3 P455w0rd5 and the Digital Era Cryptographic hash functions Fearful asymmetry Biometrics Chapter 4 Identity ‘Theft’ in a non-rivalrous world Identifying risk Knowledge/Identity List of Illustrations Notes Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Index