Theology of Passwords
Posted by xJane on December 14th, 2007 at 1:35 pm · 5 Comments
Continuing in our theme of technology & religion, this was driven home recently. At work, we have to have passwords that are exactly 8 digits long. At my old job, it was 6. The number doesn’t matter, it’s the exactness that drives me crazy. I can come up with a password that’s more than or less than, but exactly? And hasn’t been used before? Unlikely.
At my old job, we were told to come up with a sentence that we would remember and use the first (or the last, or the second) digit to form a sentence: “I love my children, Bob and Lisa” becomes “ilmc8al” or something, which is a very secure password but easy for you to remember (that’s the trick, hard for others, easy for you). At my old job, my office mate was a Muslim who wanted to be more devout, so we decided that we need to come up with a prayer or a word that is a prayer. The Our Father could be “0fwaihhbtn”, less secure because of the double Hs, but still pretty good. When I first started here, I had not thought deeply about what my password would be (as you can see, this requires a great deal of thought on my part) so I just chose the first German word that popped into my head.
This week, my password’s time was up, so I had to come up with a good one (again, on the spot, I’m now compiling a list of good ones). And it’s great: meditation throughout the day! Everytime I log into something (which is often, since we used shared computers), I get a few moments to repeat a mantra to myself, to center, to ground, to stop & just be. For just an instant. And then I can go back to work.
Tags: Meditation & Prayer · Technology
