PINs and passwords are integral to first world life. Friends and I discussed how we manage our passwords and PINs. All that caused me to think and smile.
There’s an article out there about ‘things our children wouldn’t know about’ because whatever it was is now obsolete. Telephone party lines, rolodexes, TV ‘rabbit ears’ and outdoor antennas, carbon copy or carbon paper, and those sort of things. I was thinking of the reverse mode, and how astonished our children might be that we had no PINs and passwords when I was growing up in the 1950s to mid-1970s. We never had to figure out and remember a magical combination of letters, numbers and ‘special characters’ to get in and out of our online accounts. Number one, we didn’t have online accounts. We lacked the Internet and home computers. Now, there’s a PIN to learn to use a bathroom. Another PIN to access my voice mail. A different PIN to use my credit card, depending on the card reader, and to withdraw money.
I wonder, though, how many years it’ll be until the next generation is amused with our tales of PINs & Passwords and our explanations for how they were used.
Michael Seidel, writer 
cannot tell you how annoyed I get about passwords, pins, and ‘you are not who you say you are click…”
I grew up in a small town and early on we had a party line: 12 people. Ours was ring two. When you picked up the phone 11 other people did too, and you had to wait for them to hang up …you talked to the operator first. There was no long distance. “hi, Mary, have you seen my husband? ” “hang on, mrs. whatsit I just saw him downstreet. I’ll tell him to call you.”
=)
Pins may be convenient but I just lost everything by hitting the wrong key. two hours later and I am now piecing together what goes where. (I have also aged rapidly)
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Oh, no, that is a mess! Good luck recovering from that issue. Meanwhile, when Dad and I moved to southern West Virginia in 1971, we had a party line for a few weeks. I was freakin’ astouned. Cheers
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We did have to remember the 3 digits needed to open the combination lock on our lockers.
I imagine that we will just have retina scans, fingerprints, or facial recognition in place of passwords in the future.
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Yes, that is true… Yes, that’s what I see in the future. We were already doing some of that back in the early 1990s. Cheers
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