Identifier

Each individual has certain identifiers specific to them. There are names, but they can be changed, most often reflected through marriage.  There is a telephone number which, with cell phones, can be with you for a long time.  In the United State we each receive a social security number, probably the one constant through life.  In the digital, or cyber, world we have our user name and passwords, some of which are required to be changed every three months.  But, there is also the email address.  Our family email address has changed at least four times since we connected to the internet sometime in the 1990's.  The email, I found out over the past week is important.

Cyber Cloud

One Christmas gift I received was a new I-pad.  My old I-pad was not just slow, but often pages would have to reload, and reload again, and reload again.  For at least three years the planned obsolescence of Apple prevented me from downloading the software update.  It was not only me, but both my sons had tried a to download it a few years ago without success.  Anyway, a new I-pad was one thing I could use as a Christmas gift.  I was left in a quandary as to have to reenter all of my contacts (which with the millennials, which is common for that age group, in the extended family move I found it easier to record address electronically), notes I had entered and applications, commonly referred to as apps, that I had downloaded.  Enter my oldest son who made the transfer for me.  I have a different email account than our common joint account that I had to setup for my Kindle, so I get the books I order and not my wife.  What my son was able to do, although a few glitches occurred, was download my old I-pad to a server in the netherworld of data, often referred to as "the cloud" in this case the I-cloud, and then download that information to my new I-pad.  One glitch involved some of my stuff going to my wife's I-phone.  The next day he found and fixed the problem.  What occurred to me is that emails are a necessary personal identifier.  Not only are they needed for the Kindle, and the I-cloud, but we use them for all sorts of things.  I receive certain notices to an entered email address.  And of course, in some respects, particularly at work, the email is the user name.  

One reason we went to a gmail account is the businesses being purchased.  We had a chorus account, from our first internet provider, which became TDS.  We had a Verizon account which became Frontier.  We decided a gmail account was not as likely to change its name as occurred when one company is bought or broken up.  I am not sure if I even know any longer how many people or entities have our email address, so if it ever changed, how I would let them know?  Technology is great until something changes or goes wrong.

With my new I-pad, I kept getting some bizarre notice from Amazon or other companies, or hacks, wanting me to enter information, but more importantly it prevented me from getting the screen I intended to read.  Hence, my wife said,I should use the Facebook App to help prevent that from occurring, since much of it occurred on Facebook.  Beside my son helping set up the I-pad, my wife assisted me with the Facebook app, and the related messenger app.  Why two apps I don't know, but it sure made things difficult.  Luckily she was present to help guide me through the technological difficulties.  Last week when I attempted to do my blog post, I was unable to obtain entry, even though I was logging in using the proper email address.  It kept resorting to my Kindle email address, which was open to assist with the cloud transfer.  My wife showed me how to get out of one. Without the handiwork of my son and wife, I would probably have been cussing at the computer longer than I needed.  Of course, her work uses gmail and she has become used to switching between gmail accounts.  I guess you don't always need a millennial to solve technological issues.  

This was shown by our attempting to watch a Netflix movie, but we kept getting kicked out.  We unplugged, re-entered passwords, and the like, but nothing worked.  I used my I-pad to look up potential problems, and was given about five solutions.  The first three we could not figure out the screen to be at, but we settled on the fourth and found the means to clean the cache and something else, at which point it worked.  It took a half hour, but we were rather proud of our baby boomer selves for solving the issue.  The problem popped up again, and at that point we simply decided to watch a DVD, a little old school, but when technology does not work you have to resort back to the old manner of doing things.  

Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone system

We have become slaves to technology.  There is little that can be done at work without computers. The phone system is now voice over internet system if the computers go down, you cannot even make a phone call.  This does not even get to the ever present security issues and identify theft.  I recall the first several years of power point that one was lucky if it worked 30% of the time.  There always seemed to be a problem with the computer, accepting the program, the projector, or perhaps even the software.  As we move to the digital world, at some point we may gravitate back to the old way of doing things to avoid the hassles of identity theft, computer viruses, unknown forces using your computer as part of some grand scheme for more computing power, and the other omnipresent problems with the digital age.  While the identifier is important in the cyber world, there is also job security for IT personnel.

Images from Google images