Ages ago, an ingenuous young friend said to me, “Computers sure do simplicate things.” I laughed for days, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Decades later, my life is so simplicated I can hardly stand it. In the course of a normal working day I might have launched and used as many as 18 different software applications and user interfaces. Each one had its own username and password combinations, no two of which could ever be the same it seemed.
But that was work, and work is now over. Still, things are no better. There is an ever-growing number of companies and websites that want us to set up accounts, along with usernames and passwords, in order to buy from them or even explore their sites. Then doctors began setting up “patient portals”—you guessed it! another username and password—so now even our doctors don’t actually have to talk to us.
We are now required to log on for our utilities, our mortgages, our cable companies, our shoe stores, our loyalty programs and our lunch orders.
Why doesn’t anyone just answer the damn phone any more? Because phone trees are all but free and it’s easier to have a robo-voice direct you to a website than it is to actually deal with customers.
If only I could find my username and password.