Re: This should be good
"The article isn't really about if the user understands how to use a computer, it's sort of about if the computer understands how to use the user"
I'd argue that it's not really about computers at all, but simply how to communicate with the public. For example, it's well established that having lots of road signs actually increases danger when driving because people are either too distracted reading all the signs to pay attention to their driving, or simply ignore the signs and do their own thing because they realise it would be too distracting to read them. Removing all signs and road markings has been tried in a few places and had big benefits. That might be going too far for general use, some information is quite important after all, but making sure users only see relevant, consistent information is important in pretty much all areas of life, not just computers.
Specifically to the article, users are currently in a very similar position as they are with road signs. Visit 5 different sites, and you'll get 10 different instructions on how to set a secure password, all of which contradict each other and none of which actually result in a password that is actually secure. Your data is then promptly stolen because it turns out everything was stored in plain text on a third party server anyway. Or see the law requiring warnings about cookies to be put on every site that uses them, which means pretty much every site. It's basically equivalent to having a sign every 100m along a road saying "This road uses", except that most drivers know what tarmac is while few have the slightest clue what cookies are. Users are constantly bombarded with information which at best is rarely explained in a way they can understand, and most of the time is irrelevant, contradictory or just plain wrong. People haven't given up on security because security itself is too much hassle, but rather that it's too much hassle to figure out which fragments amongst the deluge of wrongness and irrelevance would actually help them be secure.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
