Description
Book SynopsisThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The open-access edition of this text was made possible by a Philip Leverhulme Prize from The Leverhulme Trust.
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 Potte
Trade Review
An erudite and interesting amble through the history, philosophy, and psychology of passwords. * Bruce Schneier, Security Technologist and New York Times-Bestselling Author of Data and Goliath The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World *
Conjuring our passwords has become a daily act of our computer-saturated existence. By no means sequestered to our digital present, Martin Paul Eve's excellent account of the password covers its long and lively history. Weaving literary references with lucid technical explanations, Eve skillfully traces the evolution of password to probe its fundamental connections to issues of human identity, trust, and ownership. * Gabriella Coleman, Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, McGill University, Canada *
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2. “Who goes there?”: Military, Mortality and Passwords 3. Special Characters: Passwords in Literature and Film 4. P455w0rd5 and the Digital Era 5. Identity List of Illustrations Notes Index
