What I think happened is that with computing, humanity began to build a new world, a Different World that's not like the other, old world outside. But since humans were building it, it became just like that. It has the same buildup, the same issues, the same dumbness as the original, real world.<p>#1: Default permit: people don't like to spend energy, especially not upfront. Integrating "Permit by default" systems is much faster than setting them up with proper authentication, authorization and access rights. Permit default just works, starts quickly, and works fast.<p>#2: Enumerating badness: you mean, like how we name every single strain of viruses? So now we enumerate computer badness too.<p>#3: Penetrate and patch: very similar to how our laws work, I think. There are people who create injustises, and later the legal code is upgraded to handle that. Again, reactive, like in #1.<p>#4: Hacking is cool - well, other criminals are cool too, like pirates and maffiosos, and so on. People are drawn to power.<p>#5: Educating users: someone has to, doesn't they, if they haven't learnt the thing by themselves? You can't make everyone go away if they are dumb, if you need them.<p>#6: Action is Better Than Inaction: This one, I think, imitates business. There's a lot of ways to make money in business, and being there early is one of them.<p>That said, I really enjoyed the article. Permit by default is especially dumb, it was really funny when mongo installed itself with no password and listen on public IP, default port. And how long it took them to patch that. And how that haven't burned the public goodwill! So maybe these things are not really dumb after all?