the.com/iris scan
A password you can't change, printed on your eyeball since before you could walk.
means A biometric identification method that photographs the unique pattern of your iris to confirm who you are.
from 'Iris' traces back to the Greek goddess of the rainbow, borrowed for the eye's colored ring because of its rainbow-like variety of hues; 'scan' comes from Latin scandere, 'to climb,' which drifted through verse-measuring (scanning a line of poetry) into the modern sense of sweeping over something to examine it closely. The technology itself is recent — iris recognition as a practical biometric was developed and patented in the late 20th century, once computers got fast enough to map the eye's patterns instead of just admiring them.
- unique pattern
- forms randomly in the womb, even in identical twins
- stability
- basically unchanged from age one until death
- accuracy
- more precise than fingerprints, fewer false matches
- sci-fi debut
- used in airports and prisons before most smartphones