Dying for freedom, PINned to the spot

Originally published 19 June 1995

There is a sto­ry by D. H. Lawrence about a man who buys an island in order to escape the pan­de­mo­ni­um of city life.

The island has a manor house, cot­tages, ten­ants, ani­mals, and gar­dens. Main­te­nance and improve­ments begin to deplete the man’s for­tune. Even so small a soci­ety makes emo­tion­al demands. At last, the man sells his island and moves to a small­er one with only a mod­est house and a few servants.

He soon becomes snared in the small pan­de­mo­ni­ums of his reduced cir­cum­stances. Again, life becomes more com­pli­cat­ed than he can bear. Seek­ing still greater sim­plic­i­ty, he moves to a crag­gy rock in the sea, with only a hut, a few sheep, and a cat.

He sells the sheep. The cat wan­ders off. Win­ter comes and snow blan­kets the tiny island in fea­ture­less white. Alone, nei­ther hap­py nor unhap­py, the man achieves the per­fect sim­plic­i­ty of death.

I was think­ing of this sto­ry as I stood in front of the auto­mat­ic teller machine try­ing to remem­ber my per­son­al code. I was using a new card, with a new PIN, and some­how the four-dig­it num­ber had slipped my mind.

I am afflict­ed with more per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers than I find pos­si­ble to remember.

A Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber, a pass­port num­ber, three tele­phone num­bers, a fax num­ber, sev­er­al voice mail access codes, a slew of com­put­er access pass­words, half a dozen bank card PINs, a call­ing card num­ber. The num­ber of my per­son­al codes expands even as my pow­ers of mem­o­ry diminish.

Life in the infor­ma­tion age is becom­ing impos­si­bly complex.

Maybe an island, I think. A hut, a few sheep, a cat…

It should be pos­si­ble, of course, to col­lapse many of my per­son­al pass­words into a sin­gle easy-to-remem­ber com­bi­na­tion of let­ters or num­bers, per­haps CHET, or my birth year, 1936. But we are cau­tioned: “Don’t use a code that will be easy for some­one to guess.”

Any code that is hard to guess is dif­fi­cult to remember.

My spouse had a bright idea. She typed all of our per­son­al pass­words into a Per­son­al Infor­ma­tion Man­ag­er com­put­er pro­gram. We would have a per­ma­nent record to sup­ple­ment our fail­ing memories.

I wor­ried: “If some­one steals our com­put­er, they will have access to every aspect of our life.”

“No,” said my spouse, “that part of the pro­gram can be locked, so that only we can open it.”

“And how does the com­put­er rec­og­nize us?” I asked.

“A code,” she responded.

Oh.

But sure­ly, what prob­lems tech­nol­o­gy caus­es, tech­nol­o­gy can fix. It should be fair­ly sim­ple to cre­ate a stamp-sized pres­sure-sen­si­tive device with a built-in microchip that can rec­og­nize fin­ger­prints. These could be incor­po­rat­ed into com­put­ers, ATMs, tele­phones, and any oth­er machine requir­ing cod­ed access. Press your fin­ger against the pad and—voila!

But what hap­pens if I scrape my fin­ger, or bang it with a hammer?

Voice recog­ni­tion soft­ware is devel­op­ing rapid­ly. It should soon be pos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy our­selves to machines by speak­ing our names. A voice is as unique as a fin­ger­print. “Chet,” I will say to the ATM, and it will dis­pense cash.

Unless I get a cold. Or laryn­gi­tis. And what about the per­son stand­ing behind me with the tape recorder going in his pock­et? When I walk away from the machine, he steps for­ward. “Chet,” says the recorder, and the machine dis­pens­es cash.

We could have bar codes tat­tooed on our palms, and walk around marked like super­mar­ket products.

Or have microchips implant­ed in our fin­ger­tips that can be inter­ro­gat­ed by machines. This tech­nol­o­gy has already been devel­oped to keep track of lab­o­ra­to­ry ani­mals. The chips can be inject­ed as eas­i­ly as a flu shot.

But the ulti­mate tech­no­log­i­cal fix for the infor­ma­tion age would be for each per­son to car­ry a tiny transpon­der (this too could be implant­ed in the body) that would be rec­og­nized by the Glob­al Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem of satel­lites. A mas­sive cen­tral com­put­er could thus keep track of the exact posi­tion on the plan­et of every human being, and match the posi­tions with those of the appro­pri­ate machines.

When it final­ly comes to that, a lot of us will be look­ing for islands. The small­er the better.

I imag­ine D. H. Lawrence’s char­ac­ter on his lone­ly rock, hav­ing dis­posed of his bank cards, call­ing cards, cred­it cards, and com­put­ers. At last he is able to restore his mem­o­ry to things such as sea, weath­er, wild­flow­ers, and remem­brance of things past.

Win­ter comes, snows fly. A free soul in an infor­ma­tion age, he expires. In the silence and soli­tude of his island world, his for­got­ten sub­cu­ta­neous transpon­der trans­mits a plain­tive PIN to the infi­nite sky.