Dave Weinberger rightly kvetches about: Dumb security questions.
Yesterday, my ISP required me to choose two "security questions" from a drop-down list of dumb choices: the name of my first pet or my favorite book, movie, food, or place to visit.
Why dumb? First, these questions assume I don't have an Evil Sibling who knows these things; the same is true, of course, of common questions such as where you were born and your mother's maiden name.
Second, they are guessable. Type in The Bible" and "Harry Potter" as favorite book and you've probably covered 95% of Americans.
All of which would meet with a similar schneer from Schneier. But then Dave, without further comment, nails the real problem.
Third, I don't have a favorite book, movie, food or place to visit. I don't even have a favorite non-fiction book, sf novel or funny book. As for favorite places to visit, I had a really good time in Italy, but I also had a really good time in Leiden before that, and I don't really know how to rank my sister's house on Thanksgiving versus that place fifteen feet in front of the Monet water lilies in the basement of the Musée de l’Orangerie versus Heaven if the Lord is willing to overlook certain transgressions (which, by the way, are also some of my favorite places to visit).
The real problem is that organisations really, REALLY want their customers to be simple, binary, yes/no people who are sufficiently predictable to fit into an algorithm.
Accordingly, at every level, from Trivial Pursuit (which is at least honest) to practically every second or centimetre of the media to the presumed social architecture of Facebook, we are on the receiving end of a relentless drive to infantilise us, and "favourites" are the iconic infantile model.
We are in a time when the ability to manage very complex interlocking issues that require constant trade-offs against a backdrop of collapsing resources, economic and social stress is now mandatory for survival. It will require a population capable of managing walking and gum-chewing and about 4 more tasks simultaneously.
Yet everywhere we are pushed into this grossly simplified, infantile mindset by people whose only objective is to get our money and who recognise no other need. And who are supported in that need by the economic and linguistic ecology that we have co-constructed with them to surround us.
Prognosis, the last words of the human species will probably be, "what the f...."
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