The Real Barrier to Security: Were All Too Lazy

December 17, 2007 — CSO — I like to use the Alarmed column for broad contemplation at the start of each new year; it just seems like a good time to reflect on ideas like the erosion of privacy, security types doing Good in post-tsunami Indonesia, or the relative merits of cash. This year I've been ruminating on a major barrier to improving information security: You're lazy.

OK, I'm lazy, too. But you're still lazy, and here's a test to prove it: Imagine someone offered you a free 60-inch plasma TV and free cable for life, provided you never again used a remote control. It's, what, 10 steps across the room, in exchange for high-def heaven. You taking that deal? Or say a car dealer knocked $2,000 off the price of your new wheels, but only if you gave up your power windows and locks. You going to walk around your car to unlock your doors with a key, or lean way back across the back seat to crank your down your screaming kid's window? Would you buy that car?

Or, what if your bank said it could drastically decrease your chances of suffering fraud and identity theft, for free; all you'd have to do is agree to never bank or shop online again. Would you do it?

Of course you wouldn't. Neither would I. You're lazy, and so am I. Or put another way, we're addicted to convenience. Product developers and marketers are pushing it on us like never before because they know that we can't resist it. We crave it. We make our buying decisions based on it. Easy is our heroin.

Have to wring out a mop? Nah, here's a disposable pad. Have to put the kid down to slide the minivan door open? Don't bother, we'll give it an remote activated electric motor. One of my favorite examples of our laziness is a phenomenon that parents everywhere know. It's called Gogurt. For the non-parents, this is yogurt in a plastic tube. Just rip open (along a pre-torn notchno need for scissors!) and squeeze down the gullet.

Hey, look, getting out a spoon and peeling back the foil top can be a real pain, you know?

But so what, right? As Bertrand Russell writes in "In Praise of Idleness" (which does not celebrate sloth), we can assume that "labor is, on the whole, disagreeable." So if Gogurt saves time and makes a parent's life a little more agreeable, how is that bad?