Not to be morbid, but it definitely will. Young people today will be literate, and the older people will no long be part of the population.
Makes spaghetti php of bygone years look like lesson in modernism.
Computer technology follows the same trajectory because most people purchase technology for solving tasks, not because they have a craving for complexity. So "computer literacy" is about as important to society as "motor literacy".
Common sense is as important as ever, though. I.e. having a repository of background knowledge to be able to detect bullshit, fake news, and propaganda on the internet. That's the kind of old school literacy that we need.
Little if anything to do with computers manages to be so intuitive.
You're just old, complaining about how times have changed.
That's an excellent example of how computer literacy could improve things. People manage their cameras and photo libraries with whatever godawful software comes with their camera or OEM laptop. When they get a new phone/laptop with different software they have to learn from scratch.
If the new what files and folders were they could just navigate to the directory and copy the files, maybe even do it from the cli that they could then script, saving themselves some future effort. But instead of expecting them to learn something moderately difficult (ie, something we can teach 1st graders) we pander to them and make them learn something just as difficult several times over. It's not surprising people switch off and don't want to learn.
> I don't know how my car works
I think you've vastly underestimating how much you know about cars and how much of that operating knowledge you need every single time you drive it. Everything from requiring petrol to what happens when you push the brake pedal to the road rules. In fact, I bet you could even tell me some road rules from places you've never visited.
You might not know the details of how an internal combustion engine works, but I'm not suggesting most people should learn the inner details of how a cpu or hard disk works, just to learn how to drive their machine.
So I have never done much more than swap a flat tire for a spare, as a field repair. Why then do I get so pissed off when my regular mechanic tells me that a certain repair can only be done at a dealership? I wasn't going to do it myself anyway.
Because it means that I can't turn off the "check engine light", which sends my spouse spinning off into a fantasyland wherein the car violently explodes upon reaching 50 mph, or abruptly shuts down on a dark desert highway in the middle of a war between goblins and elves. Meanwhile, the "check engine light" in my daily driver has been on continuously for more than a year, because I know what the problem is, that it isn't serious, and that repairing it would be more expensive than just ignoring it until gas prices rise above $4/gal, or until it can be added on to another repair that would already require putting it up on a lift and dropping out the gas tank.
A computer does not have a "check engine light". It has an authentic-looking popup that says "Your computer is infected! Click here to download and install the Definitely-Not-a-Malware Toolbar to fix it. (And there's no need to bother your tech-savvy friend about this one....)"
Pandering because they're not interested in your hobby? What type of arrogance is this? You could make this same argument about literally anything.
Look. At the start your lamenting that people don't write their own programs instead "godawful" OEM software, that they know how to use because they do use it. Then in the second part, you say that it's cool to not know how an internal combustion engine works, because I know how to drive. That's shifting the bar. They are as you say, "driving their machine" by using the "godawful" OEM software. They're solving their need. Why can't you just respect that?
Because that's what this whole article is discussing: computer skills.
Your examples reference appliances; cars drive, cameras take pictures, TVs play stuff. Computers support multiple tasks.
Unless you expect all computer based work in the future to be run though bespoke single function apps that have one giant button, people are going to keep needing these skills.
Taking a photo? Tape the picture of the camera, and then tap the giant button. Sending a message? Tap the speech bubble, type out message, and hit the big send button. And so on, and so forth.
Work is where complex tasks expose themselves; tasks that sit between theses apps. If you don't have the knowledge or how-to to move between the buttons in the increasingly appified future, you're going to struggle.
A driver needs to know several things about how their car works - like use of oil/coolant, what the clutch does, what brakes they have, etc. - in order to drive safely.
You seem proud of your ignorance of these things?
That does not mean they are ignorant drivers as long as they know how to drive safely and make regular services according to manufacturer's guide.
Yeah. I'm proud that I don't know anything about my car, because you know what? I don't have to. That's how technology advances. You call it ignorance. I call it abstraction.
With a new car, you can probably get away with not checking the oil or knowing how to top it up (ditto the coolant); both of which are part of the UK driving test IIRC. But having the engine seize because you didn't add oil or the car over-heated can be very dangerous. All the vehicles I've owned have had manuals that describe oil/coolant/tyre checks and test them as essentials for drivers, maybe that's a UK thing - like how toasters have a leaflet telling you not to poke metal objects in them, keyless say not to run them empty, etc..
Fuel injection I don't think pertains to safe driving?
>You call it ignorance. I call it abstraction. //
Ignorance and abstraction are different. Choosing to be ignorant of the workings of your vehicle is not an abstraction per se. Like knowing how to stack Lego isn't an abstraction of the, chemical manufacturing process or physical theories involved.
There's no reason to expect that it should be increasing in the sense of a higher percentage of people reaching the higher rungs.
It's a literacy vs. fluency thing. Improvements in global communication and travel should mean that more of us can speak a few foreign languages in the sense that we can ask directions to the station and buy a beer, but it doesn't necessarily mean that significantly more of us would be able to read and discuss the details of the major works of literature in those languages.
I'm a senior at a private high school that's ranked top 3 in the nation. If I went up to someone and asked them what a regex was, nine times out of ten they wouldn't be able to tell me. Almost all people (who are otherwise are some of the most brilliant people I have met/will ever meet) wouldn't be able to reinstall Windows/macOS if their boot sector was corrupted.
Similar to programming though, even as a non technical person at a tech company you would definitely encounter situations where some simple code/db queries would help a great deal.
Intelligence is an amalgamation of deeper-than-average knowledge and natural aptitude, so that makes sense.