This is a reminder that your password will expire on some day, some time soon – if you do not change your password, you will be locked out of the universe, forever.
This message — or at least, a similar version — has arrived urgently in my email every day for the last two weeks, demanding that I update my password and better secure my accounts within the university’s systems. Chances are, you’ve received it too. Password reminders are ubiquitous and not just on college campuses — whether in workplaces or social media, passwords control our access to the world around us.
Anyone raised in this era of social networks and personal data plans relies on such words and phrases, nonsensical combinations of memory. They have invaded our daily lives, growing exponentially at the rate we increase connectivity — more avenues open, more doors and locks are needed.
At a recent seminar presented by Amber Roessner, an assistant professor in journalism and a media historian, this dependence on passwords started a conversation: what will the future of historical research look like?
Imagine the duties of historians in the libraries of the year 2080. No longer will they rummage through boxes of archived letters and speech transcripts; instead, they’ll scroll through digital records, culled from (by then) generations of email, Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds. Forget monochrome film; they will remember us through Instagram posts with Nashville filters.
On a hungover Sunday morning, these digital footprints seem like nothing more than idle entertainment. Snapchats of drunk teenagers singing karaoke don’t feel like recordings; they feel real, as if our iPhone screens are portals into the private lives of those around us, as if we’re really there — not here in bed downing Advil. We create a world so interconnected, it’s as if everyone’s in the same virtual reality with each other. All you have to do is plug in.
But all these posts and updates and Yaks – they are more than temporary images flashing information across our minds. They are trails of ones and zeros that say something about who we are and what we believe, data streams that exist in a world we cannot see. They will become historical documents, and someday — long after we’ve been unplugged — they will be all that is left of us.
By then, I suppose it won’t matter if I changed my password or not. Maybe Facebook and Google will have sold our information to the highest bidders, some new breed of historical research firm that combines capitalism and data-mining. All those nonsensical catchphrases and number combinations will be rendered pointless, rotting into meaningless reminders of privacy we once held dear like fences with holes in them, or rusty locks to long-forgotten doors.
When someday comes, every social media post and text message will fossilize into the official recorded history of our lives, the remains of our shared virtual reality.
Maybe that should make us more cautious about what we put on the Internet; maybe that should make us excited to live in such a digital age. We have the ability to preserve ourselves in perpetuity, and for better or worse, we have eagerly begun. Tomorrow is now.
But remember that the only memories you can own for yourself are the ones that have no passwords. They’re the ones we make beyond the cell phone screen — the things we’ve seen.
R.J. Vogt is a senior in College Scholars. He can be reached at [email protected].
