This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The open-access edition of this text was made possible by a Philip Leverhulme Prize from The Leverhulme Trust. Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Where does a password end and an identity begin? A person might be more than his chosen ten-character combination, but does a bank know that? Or an email provider? What's an 'identity theft' in the digital age if not the unauthorized use of a password? In untangling the histories, cultural contexts and philosophies of the password, Martin Paul Eve explores how 'what we know' became 'who we are', revealing how the modern notion of identity has been shaped by the password. Ranging from ancient Rome and the 'watchwords' of military encampments, through the three-factor authentication systems of Harry Potter and up to the biometric scanner in the iPhone, Password makes a timely and important contribution to our understanding of the words, phrases and special characters that determine our belonging and, often, our being. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

The ubiquitous password is the usually accepted standard for identity in the digital era-this book traces its history, development, and potential futures.

About the Author
Martin Paul Eve is Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He is the author of Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Reviews
An erudite and interesting amble through the history, philosophy, and psychology of passwords. * Bruce Schneier, Security Technologist and New York Times-Bestselling Author of Data and Goliath The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World *
Conjuring our passwords has become a daily act of our computer-saturated existence. By no means sequestered to our digital present, Martin Paul Eve's excellent account of the password covers its long and lively history. Weaving literary references with lucid technical explanations, Eve skillfully traces the evolution of password to probe its fundamental connections to issues of human identity, trust, and ownership. * Gabriella Coleman, Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, McGill University, Canada *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501314872
Author Dr. Martin Paul Eve
Format Paperback
Page Count 136
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic USA
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Weight(grams) 130g