I am not trying to disrespect the usefulness of computers. In fact, I have been programming and using computers for school, work, and communications since the early 1970s. In fact, when I was in graduate school, the small computer I was using in my department was one of a few that was on the internet. At that time, there were less than 1,000 computers on the internet. Now I have 9 PCs and another 27 devices attached to my home network and the internet. This is for just me as I have no one else at my house.
When the PC came out around 1981, it was touted as the revolution to make life easier and a time-saver. We could throw off the chains of the “IT” infrastructure and do things ourselves. — YEAH RIGHT!
Everyday things occur as you try to do your work that drive you crazy, and you spend like half a day trying to log in because of passwords.
Originally, you didn’t need a password. Then they created passwords so your stupid roommate couldn’t use your computer. Then they required them for various internet sites. This snowballed to the point my old Rolodex went from saving addresses and phone numbers to saving passwords for internet sites. I eventually went to an online password keeper because I was not always next to my Rolodex.
What makes me scream is when I am trying to log in to a site and enter my username and password and it comes back with
“unknown username or password.”
Then usually I try a couple of different passwords with no progress, so I open up my password program to find my login and still – no luck. At this point, I click on
“forgot your password?”
and go through all of the steps to change my password. About half the time, I finally get the response something like:
“You cannot use your old password.”
SCREAMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!! Since most of the time this is what I used 10 minutes before to login.