The first time I ever heard “This American Life” was while I was driving around Austin Texas in a rented car. That day Ira Glass was doing a wonderful riff on the idea of super powers. One bit involved asking people, given the choice between the power of flight and the power of invisibility, which they would choose. Initially the choice was about even, but just about everyone, when given more time to think about it, ended up realizing that invisibility is by far the greater power. Essentially, flight makes you vulnerable whereas invisibility gives you knowledge, and knowledge is the ultimate power.
Some people interviewed were actually afraid of the power of invisibility. One man worried that given so much power over others, he might over time become a monster — unable to resist using the power.
I thought about this again recently, when it occurred to me that these days, in the age of social networks, the power of invisibility translates rather precisely to the power of the universal password.
If you knew that you could hack into anybody’s account — whether Gmail, Facebook, or hard drive — then nothing but your own intrinsic sense of honor would stop you from abusing what amounts to a vast and disturbing amount of power over others.
The worst of it is that you might deeply regret any knowledge illicitly gained through the use of your universal password. The very act of looking into someone’s private email is a terrible transgression. If you found out that some you love had betrayed you, how would you confront them with such knowledge? It would be hard to argue that their transgression was worse than your own.
Fortunately we can say with confidence that the power of invisibility remains a fantasy. Unfortunately, it is not so clear, in the age of Gmail and Facebook, that we can say the same about its modern equivalent: the universal password.