License to Surf?

Some time ago I read an article about car accidents in the early days of the automobile era. Although there were not nearly as many cars on the roads as there are today, the number of accidents was higher and caused more casualties then today's traffic. If one goes even further back in time, cars were only available to those who were sufficiently technically skilled to build them, and to those who paid someone else to do it for them. Operating a car in those days required considerable technical knowledge about those devices. While reading the article, I realized the striking similarity with the evolution in computer usage. At first computers were only available to those who could build them: nowadays, everyone with enough money can buy one. With the general public, lacking sufficient education, starting to use computers, incidents are starting to occur more and more frequently (virus threads, accidental removal of important data etc.) In this document, the similarity between car and computer evolutions will be used to highlight security shortcomings in today's personal computer usage, as well as hint at possible remedies.