You can do nothing on the web without filling in your email address and password.  It gets time- consuming and boring, especially if you have a number of passwords (for security reasons) and you can’t remember which one to use.

So why is it obligatory to do this?  If you are contacting a bank or the Defense Department, that is another matter.  But just to get onto this blog for instance? Your check-in details are of no interest to me – I never look at them and couldn’t use them if I wanted to.  The use of addresses and passwords won’t stop the troll or the crazy person.  But no one has ever explained why we have to spend so much of our time getting access to harmless websites and general information. If you added up all the time taken every day of the year, by every web user in the world, filling in addresses and passwords it would amount to the productive labour/GDP of a medium- sized country.

Is it fair to assume that it is required so that companies can harvest your email for commercial purposes and pester you at length?  Under Epicurean world government (hah!) this practice would be banned, except for justifiable transactions, such as accessing your bank account.  The time saved would be used dining with friends and having intelligent conversations.  What do you think?  Am I missing something?