It's funny you should ask that because it touches on an analogy posed by Jeff Atwood just the other day. And a lot of people rebelled against it.

Do I call the plumber when I have a serious leak? Yes. But I don't call one when I the toilet is running or when I have a leaky faucet. No one is suggesting everyone needs to be able to write a full-fledged production program, but who can deny that having some knowledge of the inner workings of a system you depend on is not going to make you a better user?

And yet we still have people learn basic math, to read and write, etc. Like doing math with roman numerals, there are many ways the programming can be improved. We do need better notation, but that doesn't mean there is no part of the process that doesn't require the effort of the human.

Programming is about describing how to solve problems. Maybe we call a plumber, but we don't call a math professor to figure out how many plates we need on the table when people are coming to dinner.

By you logic, people don't need to be able to read because we have street signs. The ipad is easy to use because it's designed to be tightly constrained. You can only do things that people prepared for you. But solving tightly constrained problems is what computers are good for; if you can't do anymore than that, why are you needed?

Throughout history, it was believed that most people didn't need to read and write, or know math, etc. But the core of that argument is anti-humanist.

And no, "computer literacy" isn't the answer, (and is a ridiculous term anyway; literacy requires that you be able to express yourself), anymore than "calculator literacy" is the answer to solving math problems. Knowing how to use a tool isn't enough, you have to understand something about what you're trying to accomplish. A calculator isn't going to help you if you don't know what basic math is, and how it applies to the problem you're trying to solve.

When you need to read or write something, do you call somebody else to do it for you? My point is that programming in the broader sense (giving instructions to computers, which they can repeat many times with accuracy later) is a far more general and usefull ability, than for example the ability to do plumbing.