We've seen this style of complaint many times since the announcement of the iPad. I think it's mostly an overreaction. My two points:
1. Hackers hack. People who have the hacker mentality figure out a way to be a hacker. Many people from my generation grew up using machines that were exclusively Windows. (Yes, I know many people did not, but many did.) DOS was hidden, and it came with no compilers. People still hacked. Yes, even that was more "open" than an iPad. But the notion people keep bringing up is that without the knowledge that hacking a system is possible, no one will do it. I don't think this is true.
2. The abstraction level that the majority of the next generation of hackers operate at may be higher than the last generation. This is almost a self-evident statement, but I haven't seen it mentioned much. The next generation of hackers may not even need compilers. Perhaps they will take advantage of the fact that all devices these days have a browser with a JavaScript runtime.
A part of me cries out, "But they'll completely take the operating system and hardware for granted! They'll never have to think about the machine itself!" And then I remind myself that this is progress. There are plenty of things that hackers before me spent all of their time on that I rarely think about.
If they're operating on a higher level of abstraction, surely they'll still need compilers in the presence of a JavaScript runtime - they'll need them to compile whatever higher level language they're using into Javascript!
1. Hackers hack. People who have the hacker mentality figure out a way to be a hacker. Many people from my generation grew up using machines that were exclusively Windows. (Yes, I know many people did not, but many did.) DOS was hidden, and it came with no compilers. People still hacked. Yes, even that was more "open" than an iPad. But the notion people keep bringing up is that without the knowledge that hacking a system is possible, no one will do it. I don't think this is true.
2. The abstraction level that the majority of the next generation of hackers operate at may be higher than the last generation. This is almost a self-evident statement, but I haven't seen it mentioned much. The next generation of hackers may not even need compilers. Perhaps they will take advantage of the fact that all devices these days have a browser with a JavaScript runtime.
A part of me cries out, "But they'll completely take the operating system and hardware for granted! They'll never have to think about the machine itself!" And then I remind myself that this is progress. There are plenty of things that hackers before me spent all of their time on that I rarely think about.