Passwords, Future Shock and Bookclubs

I recently learned in my Digital Civilization class how poor most passwords are. I was amazed to learn that my professor had hundreds of passwords. He creates a new password for every site that requires password authentication. He does it through a password program that creates and remembers his passwords. So I decided to experiment.

I have a White 15 inch mac. It came with a password program called Keychain. I consider myself moderately computer savvy and was able to figure it out without too much problem. You paste the web address of the website requiring a password on the first line. Then your screen name. Click the picture that looks like a key and you get an automatically generated password and a chart showing its relative strength. Paste in the password to the third line and presto! Unique password that you never have to remember.

The reason I had to figure this out was because I wanted to sign up to Goodreads.com in order to find out what people were saying today about the book, Future Shock  by Alvin Toffler, written in the 1970's. Alvin is considered a 'futurist' and uses historical patterns to write about the future. His book Future Shock describes a culture or society that is changing so rapidly that even the members of that society cannot stay up-to-date. He uses the experience of culture shock and applies it to one's own culture that is changing so rapidly that he or she is completely overwhelmed.

Reading this summary and a few of the reviews reminded me of another book, The World is Flat by Thomas Freidman. Thomas's argument is that because of capitalism, globalization and instant communication, the world is able to interact almost seamlessly with itself. Distances used to be nearly insurmountable, in terms of transporting goods, people or even information. Civilizations were established nearly in isolation. Now, occurrences or discoveries in one part of the world can be instantly communicated and implemented on the other side of the world.

The interesting thing I found was the dialogue of comments below one negative review. The argument began because the blogger had not finished the book yet gave a negative review of it. That argument evolved into the main theme of the book, whether capitalism has hurt more than helped the general welfare of those who participate in it or if a more socialist economy is better. It was fascinating to see people's views, and discover which one's I agreed with and which ones I didn't. Here is an example of the discussion.

Rocio wrote: "I totally understand where Daniel is coming from, my cousin bought me this book when I was 17, me thinking it might actually be a "history" book, since it says "History of the 21st century" and I r..."

Ghettos in the U.S. are a product of public housing. And as for poverty, you talk about the rest of the world, but what impoverished nation practices capitalism? The benefits of capitalism are that our version of poverty is better than the "good life" in nations where capitalism has never existed. Although the U.S. hasn't actually been capitalist since . . . well . . . ever.

That is the fun part about book clubs. You get an audience to discuss your readings and viewpoint with. Like I just joined goodreads.com and was surprised at how intuitive it is. I would recommend everyone who likes to read, do the same.

Let me know if you like it or not.