[lukev]

Not if it provides a significant-enough benefit. How many people had "passwords" as a daily part of their life before 1995 or so?

Every technology is new at some point. My thesis is that keys are not that hard and technical people should actually try to push understanding of them into the non-techie realm. If they fail, they fail, but if they succeed, it would make all computing so much more secure.

Edit: I should also point out that it's not really any more complicated than OpenID, and people seemed willing to give that a fair shake, at least to the extent that a lot of sites implemented it.

[pbhjpbhj]

Most people in my country of adult age. PIN (bank ID code) are effectively passwords.

[rahoulb]

Kids have used passwords in games for years. everyone's seen spy movies. the story of alladin is part of popular culture.

but "here is a thing in two parts, one of which you give to everyone but one of which you need to keep absolutely to yourself or you're screwed" doesn't have a common analogy. even the "i give you an open box with a padlock" analogy can feel a bit contrived.

However I also feel that there was no cohesive attempt at building a similar story for OpenID - which is a shame as it could be as simple as "tell us which site you want to log in via and we'll do the rest"

[jarek]

Public key = your address. Private key = the key to the front door.