Logins and passwords

As soon as the digital world emerged, human identification in it came about through the use of ‘credentials’, composed of a ‘login name’ and a ‘password’. Thus humans had to become individuals in the digital world too, to be able to continue the augmentation of their information processing unhindered. In the analogue world each individual is identified by a name and citizenship; in the digital one, by a login name and password. Of course one might ask how, if states are natural to humans, as argued in this analysis, the digital world has worked for humans so far, and is able to keep expanding? After all, it is not states that give out the credentials needed to (identify) individuals in the digital world. However, we need to be careful before making any assumptions: in the digital world, credentials from the state have, for the moment, been replaced by those provided by the private online platforms. (On digital territory (whereby private online platforms are themselves found in the (digital) territory of their respective states), see §17.00.12.) Any credentials today are valid for a specific platform only, they uniquely identify an individual only on it. When using the platform, they are necessary for humans; outside of it, they are of no use. In other words, while the digital world’s credentials (login name and password) correspond to an individual’s name in the analogue world, that individual’s citizenship (to complement the unique identification mechanism used in the analogue world) is implied in the digital one: it is the platform on which these credentials are valid. The above-described mechanism for unique identification in the digital world is easily viewable in the structure of email accounts: the @ symbol (meaning ‘at’, as in ‘of’, see, for example, ‘’Thucydides of Athens wrote ….’ or ‘Herodotus of Halicarnassus …’, see §08.01.02) specifies, in essence, citizenship (individuals are allowed to choose their name in the first part). Similarly, even when so-called anonymous communications are allowed in the digital world, individuals’ aliases are registered with and work only on each specific online platform. In recent years the situation of having multiple digital world credentials has increased to the extent that, first, specialised software was developed to manage them (humans being able to remember only a limited number of passwords) and, subsequently, centralisation occurred, as is the case with the option to ‘log in with Google’ or ‘with Facebook’ or other popular private online platforms. When this latter option is replaced with ‘log in with your state’s credentials’, states will have moved decisively towards claiming the digital world for themselves.

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