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Even then people can and do learn. And I don’t see why people assume that computer and network issues are that much more complicated to learn than any other security or safety concerns for anything else you might do or use. People can be taught this stuff. We managed to learn electrical safety and gas safety and safe driving and thousands of other problems that came along with new technology.
Well, that's because you trust yourself to get out of anything you get yourself into.
The problem with learning how to use computers is that, quite literally, everything's behind glass. The efforts to ameliorate this in the early '90s (and to a point, why early versions of iOS had the design language they did) were all attempts at solving this problem, and the reason the more famous ones failed (specifically Microsoft Bob) was because this problem is intractable outside of maybe VR- it's just side-grading from one "this is all behind glass, weirdly artificial, and I'm not truly in control of this machine's states" to "that, but at least it looks like a house".
With other forces of nature, such as electricity, gas, driving, etc., you're interacting with a physical thing. Human beings are exceptionally good at manipulating and understanding physical things- for electricity, you can physically guarantee that the current isn't going to go anywhere but where the wires conduct it. Same thing with driving (or at least, before we stuck shitty tablets in the dash).
Take away the state they're supposed to be directly manipulating, though, and make it both abstract and only accessible through a very specific set of fragmented language? And make it clear that (just like how people claim drivers would be better if there was a gigantic spike sticking out of the steering wheel) there are a bunch of [metaphorical, but sometimes very literal] loaded guns sitting inside the box? I don't blame anyone who hasn't had time/motivation to practice that in a safe environment for giving up pre-emptively.
(And the industry has done itself no favors- yes, there is an undo button, but the contexts in which it is useful and the powers it has within those contexts are not obvious even though with a plain-English reading they should be. Plus, now you have mobile-first design, which has to hide that functionality as a limitation of the user interface if it even has it at all... and every redesign that's made without actually proving it out, which UX designers love to do for some reason, chips away at the established knowledge base of a user little by little until there's nothing left.)
I don't think it's that people are unwilling or unable- though there are certainly plenty of men and women who very blatantly refuse to use their eyes- but there's no obvious observable demonstration of "input A results in desired state 1", and that's coupled with "input B-Z results in undesired states 2 through 2000 and there's no easy way to go back to before making that input". So yes, "basic stupidity" is a thing that keeps people from understanding these devices, but I don't think it's the primary cause.
Speaking of physical interfaces... you ever seen what PLC programming interfaces look like? Ladder logic is arguably the most intuitive programming environment ever invented and most software developers have no idea it exists; its entire design goal is to make it as obvious as possible what input will result in what output. The only real thing you have to deal with there is the logic; more advanced things like functions become much more obvious when you can physically [or at least, as close to physically as possible- in this case, tracing a line with your eyes or finger] see what's happening and why.
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