“Asking people to approve access that they know they don't fully understand and that they couldn't monitor even if they did understand it does not empower them. On the contrary, it trains them to be despondent, helpless at the hands of the High Priesthood of Computer Whisperers. And our job as technologists building a better world is to eradicate the High Priesthood.”
@sil@robin This feels like another stab at OpenDoc. Trying to let users compose content and tools arbitrarily has been proposed ever since GUIs have existed, but realistically the most compelling apps (almost by definition) end up pushing the boundaries drawn by any framework, and there's no motivation for app developers to buy into the system--it's more difficult to program and harder for users to understand, so it's a lose-lose. (Not to mention it doesn't encourage user retention.)
@sil@robin But what would prevent the tiles from downloading malicious code to a user agent? Preventing the tiles from communicating with the rest of the network doesn't seem to offer much security via encapsulation, since the proposal itself says that titles could still convey links and other data that come with all sorts of security risks.
And if the current browser model won't work (well) with tiles, that means a whole new user interface will be required - and that means all the old security issues will be resurrected and have to be dealt with again.
And what compelling reason will the general population have for switching agents? They're already inundated with browsers and apps.
@robin I need to spend more time thinking about the tiles idea before I know whether I agree with it. But regardless of that, I entirely agree that helping people to understand that they ought to not need Computer Whisperers is a core goal of what we ought to be doing :)
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