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I have trouble accepting the claim that, unlike the author, you have a categorically different understanding of the technology that surrounds us. Famously, there is no single person on Earth that even knows how to even make a pencil. The bewildering complexity of modern microchips is likewise beyond the capacity of any one person to understand.
Going further, the emergent properties of neural networks can sometimes defy explanation entirely. It is likely we are going from an era where no single person can understand technology, to an era where human society as a whole is unable to understand the technology it has created.
Comfort with technology is an illusion created by a person's ability to interact with the human interface of that technology, not by actual deep understanding of the internals.
This doesn't feel right. Sure, a single person might not be able to know how to make all the stuff needed to make a pencil, but surely they can learn the process of taking the necessary inputs/materials and turning that into a pencil. The pencils still get made at a pencil factory, there is a process that is almost certainly documented in a How It's Made episode. I was given to understand that "I, Pencil" was more about market freedom and capitalism and all that, not necessarily the actual knowledge economy or technology at play--it merely illuminates the logistical chain needed to produce a pencil.
Likewise, microchips do have schematics, the transistors don't magically arrange themselves as a protein undergoes folding. There likely is careful consideration of the arrangement of logic gates, channels, and buses.
If your argument is that most people don't understand the inner workings of the technology they use, that's not terribly surprising. I think it just takes a modicum of curiosity, a curiosity that may have limits to how much it can be inculcated modulo things like mindsets or neurodivergence. But it's not outside the realm of possibility for people to learn about things.
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