The Ignorance in Techno Worship

It doesn't surprise me in the least we humans are fascinated by the marvels of modern digital technology, but what does surprise me is that we can maintain such fascination while lacking any legitimate understanding of what we hold so dear. Think of the smart phones and computers that are now commonplace. Through many levels of successful abstraction, system developers have managed to move users so far "off the metal" that the average user no longer understands even the slightest operational detail of their machines. And this isn't a mistake, in fact its the goal here, and by all accounts it's a great success. The issue here though is that people are becoming increasingly dependent on the companies that make these devices and services simply to operate them. Wait, but that doesn't seem bad at all. What happens is that as we become less and less aware of the actual workings of the technologies we base our lives around, all-in-one packages become more and more attractive. 

Think of the computing products and services you would select for one of your elderly family members. It must be simple, intuitive, and integrated. You don't want a television that takes 5 remotes to operate, because grandma can't keep track of that. You look for something that has one remote to cleanly control everything she has, saving her the pain and confusion of delving into the specifics of each device. Our societal relationship to new technologies is the same situation, just look at the massive efforts of google to integrate as many different services as possible into one experience. One presence. This is even a google website right here. As technologies become increasingly more complex, we, by comparison, become ever more like this hypothetical grandmother. 

Think of any stories you have read or watched that take place in a technological dystopia. The preeminent cliched feature of the technological dystopia is the single omnipresent tech company that has expanded to, and synthesized, every aspect of life that can be digitized. This fantasy is the continuation of the current trend of ignorance in the face of ever increasing technology, allowing companies to entice individuals into trading privacy and control for easier user experiences.

I'm amazed that such a large number of people are content to not even understand any of the devices or technologies that now rule our human interactions. Sure it's easy to write off, humans don't always like getting into the nitty gritty back end of things of they are already working well, but why isn't this something that we take seriously enough to educate ourselves on, or at the very least our children. I attend a school that clearly realizes the significance of computer technology in the digital age, it would be nearly impossible not to. Every student at this school is required to purchase a laptop, yet the same institution doesn't offer a single computer science related course. How many of the people who will read this, of course on a computer, will know what a transistor is?