[Cryptography] Explaining PK to grandma

[Peter Gutmann]

Jon Callas <jon at callas.org> writes:

>Teaching people the risks inherent in driving machines like cars has only
>happened because of legislation, active and passive regulation (insurance
>demands are passive regulation), and three generations of time.

You forgot to mention one of the most important factors, "Hollywood and TV".
Everyone's seen who-knows-how-many car chases, explosions, and car wrecks, in
movies, and gory car accidents, on the TV new or on America's Funniest
Automotive Decapitations or whatever.  Telling them "if you do/don't do X,
you'll end up like Y" is pretty easy.  OTOH for email security the best you
can do is say "if you do/don't do X", where X is invariably some geeky silly-
walk, "then some vague and undefined bad thing may or may not happen".

Peter.