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Walt Mossberg's Last Column Calls For Privacy and Security Laws (recode.net)
70-year-old Walt Mossberg wrote his last weekly column Thursday, looking back on how "we've all had a hell of a ride for the last few decades" and revisiting his famous 1991 pronouncement that "Personal computers are just too hard to use, and it isn't your fault."
Not only were the interfaces confusing, but most tech products demanded frequent tweaking and fixing of a type that required more technical skill than most people had, or cared to acquire. The whole field was new, and engineers weren't designing products for normal people who had other talents and interests. But, over time, the products have gotten more reliable and easier to use, and the users more sophisticated... So, now, I'd say: "Personal technology is usually pretty easy to use, and, if it's not, it's not your fault." The devices we've come to rely on, like PCs and phones, aren't new anymore. They're refined, built with regular users in mind, and they get better each year. Anything really new is still too close to the engineers to be simple or reliable.
He argues we're now in a strange lull before entering an unrecognizable world where major new breakthroughs in areas like A.I., robotics, smart homes, and augmented reality lead to "ambient computing", where technology itself fades into the background. And he uses his final weekly column to warn that "if we are really going to turn over our homes, our cars, our health and more to private tech companies, on a scale never imagined, we need much, much stronger standards for security and privacy than now exist. Especially in the U.S., it's time to stop dancing around the privacy and security issues and pass real, binding laws."
He argues we're now in a strange lull before entering an unrecognizable world where major new breakthroughs in areas like A.I., robotics, smart homes, and augmented reality lead to "ambient computing", where technology itself fades into the background. And he uses his final weekly column to warn that "if we are really going to turn over our homes, our cars, our health and more to private tech companies, on a scale never imagined, we need much, much stronger standards for security and privacy than now exist. Especially in the U.S., it's time to stop dancing around the privacy and security issues and pass real, binding laws."
Yeah, I know that's not a nice thing to say, but you're not going to get anywhere with privacy laws while 76% of the country lives paycheck to paycheck. You just won't be able to get the kinds of people in office that'll bother. The crooks will actively oppose it and anyone decent will be too busy with more pressing matters.
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"Personal computers are just too hard to use
Here's the thing though. Since computers were harder to use in the 1970's and 80's, you had two kinds of people: those with no involvement whatsoever with technology, and those who more or less were technically literate.
Now, they have become easier to perform some common "canned" tasks, but that means there are two kinds of people: and both are now computer users: technically literate people, and technically illiterate. Whereas before the technically illiterate had no impact on the evolution of technology, they now dominate the story because they are the vast majority and it is it their purchasing choices and user choices that determine where things go.
When they insist on things being "simpler than they are", or when they decide in mass to give all their data to sad companies like Google and Facebook, that harms everyone in the end.
I'm not so certain that making computers too easy to use has been for the better. Sure, it has allowed more people to have access, but most of them are making terrible choices.