Living Life By The Numbers Doesn’t Add Up Bewildered Consumers Pushed Ever Closer To Digit Overload

Author Paul Dickson figures he leads a 76-digit life. Although he works at home, without all the codes and passwords of an office, that’s what he keeps in his head to get through an average day.

He’s not alone. Today’s minds are crowded with a random swirl of digits and characters. Too crowded, for anyone who has stared blankly at a bank machine, suddenly at a loss for numbers.

So frozen you could hear a PIN drop.

After years of worry about conformity and facelessness, the digit revolution is upon us.

And apart from whether that is a worthwhile trade-off for modern efficiencies and security, this much is clear: Some memories are being taxed to the max.

People juggle Personal Identification Numbers, one password to unlock the fancy car, another for home security, another for the gym locker, another to reset the radio when the car battery dies.

At work the burden grows: the computer log-on, the phone message code, the Internet passwords, different access numbers for different hallways.

At one federal agency, people must key in the numbers for a sequence of baseball players’ uniforms to get from point A to B.

And that’s not counting all the digits needed to make widgets: the endless spew of employee, tax, benefit and inventory numbers in the workplace.

“It’s almost frightening the numbers we live with,” says Dave Johnson - and he works for number-hungry AT&T.

On occasion, even psychologist Terry Libkuman forgets his computer log-on - and he has taught memory at Central Michigan University.

Such scholars believe the typical mind can commit only five to nine unrelated items to short-term memory. Long-term memory is vast but, like a big old warehouse, you can’t always find something there when you need it.

“What will happen is you’ll probably get a lot of interference,” Libkuman said. “It can be very easy for those numbers to become confused.”

The usual memory aids, like writing a number down, using the same one for multiple purposes or associating it with something else, are frowned on for security reasons. Choosing Mom’s birth date as your access code is not wise.

New technology is not the only strain on memory. Even those little area codes are suddenly up to mischief - quick, where’s 757? (Norfolk, Va.) You can’t count on area codes having a one or zero in the middle anymore.

Rafts of numbers also are needed on hand if not in the mind: the 32 digits, for example, that it can take to make a call with a credit card on a phone using a different long-distance carrier.

That’s a long way from Pennsylvania-6-5000, to cite one storied and real phone number from the past. Or a mere 0, still available, but slow and often pricey.

“The things we have to remember are harder to remember because they’re less interesting,” says Dickson, who has written widely on cultural quirks and laments the numerical march in his latest book, “What’s in a Name?…”

An exchange from the 1960s British TV series, “The Prisoner,” about a character caught in an Orwellian world where everyone is assigned a number:

“Good morning, No. 6.”

“Number what?”

“Six. For official purposes. Everyone has a number. Yours is six.”

“I am not a number. I am a person.”

Americans began being assigned numbers starting Dec. 1, 1936. That’s when John D. Sweeney Jr. of New Rochelle, N.Y., became the first person to get a Social Security card.

Nine digits, almost from the cradle and right to the grave.

“We’ve always said we don’t think of the Social Security number as a national identification number but it certainly has evolved into that in some respects,” says Tom Margenau, spokesman for the Social Security Administration.

Meant to track earnings and retirement benefits, it’s used widely now even though there is usually no legal requirement to provide it.

Rian Smith is good with numbers - and good thing. The International Finance Corp. consultant came up with 222 digits in her memory, a range of vital or obvious statistics from phone codes to shoe size.

Her bank account number recently doubled to 14 digits. She still knows it.

But like many people, she does best with a keyboard in front of her or a phone in her hand, when she does not stop to think.

“My fingers know the numbers,” she says. “My brain does not.”

Even as technology pushes people closer to digit overload, it can pull them back. Coded cards, phones that program a variety of numbers and Internet search engines help skirt some numerical swamps.

But even using cash, you can’t buy your way out.

Plunk down a dollar to buy a wire at Radio Shack and you will be pressed for your name, address and phone number - to be entered in its database and added to its mailing list.