[cap-talk] High level dissonance

[Toby Murray]

On Sat, 2008-02-23 at 12:14 -0800, ihab.awad at gmail.com wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 2:57 AM, Toby Murray
> <toby.murray at comlab.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> >  I don't think we can do that, whilst allowing users to innovate and
> >  experiment with their machine in generative ways.
> >  The trick is to find a way to do POLA while allowing the machine (i.e.
> >  the software it runs etc.) to remain fluid.
> >  ... there is a tension  there with allowing
> >  the user freedom  and preventing them  from having to make too many
> >  choices.
> 
> These 3 sentences are great; thank you! :)

I'm partly parroting the words of Jonathan Zittrain here.

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/faculty.cfm?id=3

He recently gave a talk at OUCL (Oxford Uni Computing Lab) about the
future of the internet that I was fortunate enough to attend. He raised
a basic question that remains in  my mind:

"How to we allow the user to remain secure whist allowing them to
experiment/innovate/generate content with their machine (by writing
their own code or running new code provided by third-paries?)".

It is the power of the desktop PC that has brought to life so much of
the potential of  the net. We must strive to harness that power whist
seeking to provide a true POLA interface.

This seems no easy feat to say the least.