> I'd go further, we've turned a celebration of ignorance around cybersecurity and dismissive attitudes into virtuous slogans.
> "Don't make me think" - Krug
That quote has nothing to do with cybersecurity, it's the title of a book by Steve Krug about web usability.
I am unfortunately old enough to have read that book when it first came out, and it's exclusively around how to design front-end UIs on websites to reduce user complexity. There is no mention of infrastructure or security at all.
You're making a quote around how we should make websites more usable and understandable to users - so they can use them without thinking - into something it isn't.
I know exactly what the book is and I read it. It's actually an
excellent book on UX and I expect Steve Krug picked the title because
it sounds cool.
No disrespect to that author intended, but it (maybe unwittingly)
expresses a sentiment that has grave implications about the position
of technology in human affairs. To understand why, please look deeper
into what we used to call Human Computer Interaction (HCI) or
"Cognitive Ergonomics".
I think I recently mentioned it in this online chat [0]
Explicit cognition is the "thinking slow" part of our brains that uses
so-called left-brain linear reasoning and logic. It sits high in the
cognitive stack. But as people use devices today, in what McLuhan [4] or
Innes [5] would call an "acoustic" (nothing much to do with actual sound)
way, we drop down a cognitive level to a faster, visual-haptic loop
that bypasses explicit reasoning.
Designing applications that bypass this has major effects on security.
The work of B J Fogg will show you more about this [1].
Tristan Harris also has lots on it [2,3].
One of the disastrous effects of this "distracted" level of HCI is
that people use more emotional cues, rote, colour, word association,
implicit trust and other models that make them easy prey for phishing
and other kinds magic and trickery.
If you're interested in a much broader understanding of cybersecurity
I give you a sincere invitation to check us out here [6].
> "Don't make me think" - Krug
That quote has nothing to do with cybersecurity, it's the title of a book by Steve Krug about web usability.
I am unfortunately old enough to have read that book when it first came out, and it's exclusively around how to design front-end UIs on websites to reduce user complexity. There is no mention of infrastructure or security at all.
You're making a quote around how we should make websites more usable and understandable to users - so they can use them without thinking - into something it isn't.