-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 10/4/12 10:59 AM, Mark H. Wood wrote: > Billions of people have learned to use banks and checkbooks at > least somewhat securely. I think one difference here is that one > is taught from an early age and *expected* to learn their proper > use.
I have made this analogy before, but -- Imagine there is a new technology. Call it "Grumpelfnord." Grumpelfnord technology lets you talk to the dead and with people who are in far-away places. Those people who understand grumpelfnord are seen as possessing almost magical powers. The world can be divided into two categories: the ones who know grumpelfnord, and the ones who don't. Grumpelfnord is tightly correlated with economic prosperity, health, and life happiness. The bad news is that learning grumpelfnord requires upwards of ten years of intensive, continuous training by subject matter experts specializing in grumpelfnord. Everyone agrees that mastery of grumpelfnord is absolutely essential to our modern society and economy, but people tend to view it as broccoli: sure, other people should learn and practice grumpelfnord, but each individual person says they can get by without it. You can easily substitute "security awareness" for grumpelfnord. All you have to do is change what the technology lets you do -- the rest of the paragraph stands as-is. Everyone knows security awareness is essential, but everyone wants somebody else to learn it. Grumpelfnord technology is real, by the by. It's called literacy. Literacy lets us learn from authors who have been dead for thousands of years, and opens up the world to us via letters, missives and email. Literacy is essential to modern society, and is so important that most Western countries give children ten years or more of constant practice in it (in the form of compulsory schooling). And despite the fact we invest so much in teaching people how to read, in America the average adult American reads under two books per year. I don't see there being any quick, easy or cheap solutions to the problem of how to get people to be more security-aware. I think things will only change once computer literacy gets taught in the public-school curriculum, and treated with the same seriousness that normal literacy is. And even then, I think that as soon as people leave public schools they will willingly and cheerfully let their computer literacy skills atrophy, just like we tend to let our conventional literacy skills atrophy. This is, of course, just speculation. I have no basis for believing this beyond my own meandering experience. Now, if you'll pardon me, there's a copy of Xenophon's _Anabasis_ that I've been neglecting for far, far too long. It's high time I re-read it. :) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iFYEAREIAAYFAlBtqZgACgkQI4Br5da5jhAsvQDgtE8/21dRZAaQQoJhPa2a8IUV kMY2pD1VNS7zZQDbB66XlRSOy8mPh2sLx4ZFYfGm3rz+/bk4l9+XJg== =N8nW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
