In the course of any single day I enter a pattern of codes to gain entry to my devices, which unfurl another series of portals asking for more keys to unlock other doors. For the ones lost to time or buried deep within the folds of my memory I refer to an old-fashioned Word document, which itself isn't always up to date. Or when that fails there is a kind of digital skeleton key on my MacBook Pro that stores the latest version of every password (provided I know my laptop's entry password.) Then there are the series of two-step authentications I go through whenever I visit my bank account or the IRS site. The threat of fraud lurks constantly in the background of our lives. And now we have to contend with the people in power poking around our personal files like some long-nosed bureaucrat from a 19th Century Russian novel.

A few months ago I fell asleep at my desk at work and when I woke up, disoriented, I couldn't seem to log into my computer after several tries. Still groggy, I had a brief existential crisis as I wondered why my identity and my password didn't match up. It happened in the old days too. Like if you were trying a key in a lock repeatedly before realizing you were at the wrong door. But this now is something else. Reading the headlines every day I'm struck by a similar kind of existential vertigo, asking myself, "is this real?" "What in the hell is going on? Where am I ? What country do I live in?