Longtime friend and colleague Dr. Eugene Schultz and I talked about this exact problem several years ago at a government security conference. He said, "I do not understand why, after more than 30 years, we have not built a self-healing operating system." Why, we agreed, should a user have to become fluent in complexities of defending their computers from the vast plethora of attack vectors? Should we really expect them to do that in the midst of their daily lives?

Why are hundreds of millions of smart phones consumerizing the enterprise? In large part because they are simple. Anyone can use them. Apps are simple, as per my wish list above. Ten billion downloads in a couple of years tells us what the user wants: simplicity, only the tools they need, a really cool UI and a paycheck.

Sure, users will always be dumb. They will shift into second gear instead of drive and hit the highway at 70 mph only to burn out their transmission. Auto manufacturers design for what I call the Dumbest Common Denominator, and in that regard, I agree with Mark's assessment of users.

On the other hand, in so many ways, the IT community can be legitimately accused of Epic Fail. We have overestimated them beyond comprehension and that is our fault. There are three million of us geeks and three billion of them. Mark and I are both right, but seem to disagree on how high the digital literacy bar should be.

Winn Schwartau, winn@alwayschaos.com, is one of the world's top experts on security, privacy, infowar, cyberterrorism and related topics. (He also highly recommends Backspin. Really.)