Media: Guardian offers Challenge to Protecting the User from the Guts

"Smash the Windows" in the Guardian by Dylan Evans, part of the team to inspire the latest Matrix film, asks whether ordinary people should be breaking out of cosy user interfaces that make it easy for us to use computers, to look at the code beneath.

He argues: 'not only does this prevent people from getting inside the machine and keep them in a state of blissful ignorance, it also proves to be a deceit, for in the end the user still has to adapt to the machine anyway.

'We wait, a captive audience, while the browser painstakingly loads the next image-stuffed web page, or we click through menu after menu until we eventually realise that we are not in control after all. The Windows control us.'

'To be truly free in the 21st century, we have to ignore the flashy graphics and really get inside our computers', he argues. I say: freedom always seems to come at a high price.

An article to fight with, if nothing else.

Associated Link: Guardian: Smash the Windows

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