On the errand · Scope, watch, take back or end the errand. · it acts
Element 94
Let it do this kind of thing: once, for now, or always.
allow once · this session · always allow
The other half of the exchange is Refuse.
First known
From a history
1997Netscape Communicator 4: a signed applet asks for a privilege. Grant lasts until you quit; tick 'Remember this decision' and it lasts for good. Netscape.
See also: iOS 13 adds 'Allow Once' to location prompts (June 2019); Java Plug-in later offers 'Grant this session' and 'Grant always' for signed applets.
“If the user clicks Grant, access to the specified target for the specified signer is permitted until the user quits Communicator. If the user clicks the "Remember this decision" checkbox and then clicks Grant, access ... is permitted indefinitely”
Netscape's dialog offered 'for now' and 'always' in 1997; iOS 13 added 'once' in 2019.
Dated by a reputable history or a participant's own account. The source.
- ReadingValue
Specimen № 94 — operate freely
Answer its prompts as they come. Mind what “always” will cover.
Fig. 94 — Grant
000 readings · idle
Anatomy of Grant
- 01Ask
- You
- Is interrupted.
- It
- Stops before a kind of act it hasn't been allowed.
- 02Scope
- You
- Answers: once, for this session, or always.
- It
- Writes the answer down as a rule.
- 03Apply
- You
- Isn't asked again.
- It
- Acts on the rule, including on cases the person never saw.
Phases light as the specimen above registers them. The dark ones are the ones it can't sense.
Lineage
Phones asked for every permission at install until Android 6.0 (2015) moved the question to the moment of use. iOS 13 (2019) added "Allow Once" for location, and Android 11 (2020) extended one-time grants to the camera and microphone. Agents inherited the ladder of once, this session, and always.
Under delegation
Mutates
- Survives
- Mutates
- Dissolves
A phone asks about a capability: the camera, your location. An agent asks about an act, and the answer quietly becomes a rule about acts nobody has seen yet. Prompts that come often get answered fast, so the widest rules get written at the moment of least attention.
On the errand: its twin
The two series line up in pairs. Each act on a guess sits above the act that does the same thing to an errand, so Autocorrect and Grant are one move made on two kinds of thing.
Bodies
The act stays put while the hardware changes. These are some of the forms Grant takes.
- allow once
- this session
- always allow