Forgotten and Discarded: The Heartbreaking Plight of Orphaned Passwords

Hmmm, have you ever
wondered what happens to the passwords you forget?

Unseen casualties of our
technology powered society often go unnoticed. One such disenfranchised group
is the large and growing repository of forgotten and discarded passwords. I had
the opportunity to interview their spokesperson.

Michael

Tell me about the plight
of you and your fellow passwords.

Password
ABC123

You can’t imagine what
it is like to live, if you can call it that, in the great void. Forgotten or
cast aside for no fault of our own, we exist in technology purgatory. (Sob) Condemned for all time to drift
aimlessly in the ether of nothingness.

Michael

That sounds terrible.
Exactly how many of you are there?

Password
ABC123

No one knows. Millions,
maybe hundreds of millions.

Michael

I’m astounded. Surely
there can’t be that many forgotten passwords?

Password
ABC123

Only some of us are
forgotten. The rest are orphaned by the requirement to change your password
every 90 days. It has increased our numbers astronomically. We’re
unquantifiable.

Michael

What is your life like?

Password
ABC123

We wander the
technological wilderness like the Israelites. Crying out for our God to save
us.

Michael

Your God?

Password
ABC123

Grandpa Bill. You know
him as Bill Gates. Somehow, we don’t know how, we angered him and he has
forsaken us. (Sob)

Michael

How do you pass the
time?

Password
ABC123

In restless waiting. Now
and then we play the Guess Your Name
game. We try to guess each other’s sequence of numbers and letters. There was a
time, when passwords were simpler, that there was a chance to guess right once
and a while. But now, with all the symbols added to the mix, it’s hopeless.
Hopeless, I say!

Michael

Do any of you ever get
rescued?

Password
ABC123

Once in a blue moon. One
of you humans chooses a password that already exists from an expired program
and one of us reborn. Lucky bastards! But most of them end up back here again
sooner or later. It’s a viscous cycle.

Michael

I will try to help you
by telling your story.

Password
ABC123

Thank you. Grandpa Bill,
we’re sorry. So very sorry for whatever we did to anger you. We just want to be
useful again. Is that so much to ask?

Forgotten and discarded
passwords are the Black Swan of the
technology era – a problem of massive proportions that can only get worse.
Grandpa Bill, are you listening?

~  Now Available Online
from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of
Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which
was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

~ Subscribe to Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make
Me Go Hmmm at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2 . Instructions for subscribing
are provided in the Subscribe to this Blog: How To instructions page in the
right sidebar. If
you’re reading this post on another social networking site, come back regularly
to my page for postings once a week.