I mean yes. But no. A lot of what he says resonates with me. Except the bit about computers needing to be difficult to encourage learning. That's the adversity

I mean yes. But no. A lot of what he says resonates with me. Except the bit about computers needing to be difficult to encourage learning. That's the adversity-builds-character mindset that I disagree with. The computer I learned to hack on was a Macintosh IIsi. It wasn't bare metal like a 8-bit computer that booted into BASIC. Nor finicky with lots of arcane configurations like a Windows 3.1 machine (and I've used both of those as well). It had all the it just works plug-and-play that he laments in Windows 7 but as a curious kid with a hacker mentality it served me just fine. Enough that by the time I graduated from it I was modifying the System with hooks written in 680x0 assembly. But the author really goes wrong, I believe, in his conclusion that the cause of digital literacy is served by forcing users to be gurus. This is entirely wrong and is the crux of the observation I made above. There is a myth in UX development that programmers are targeting a conceptual user that exists somewhere on a continuous slope between novice and power user. The article ends with suggesting that computers be taught by setting people onto this theoretical path. (And to be honest I think he's mistaken that this isn't what we've already been doing and shown to not be effective.) But what if that path doesn't exist? Then trying to teach anyone that way will be fruitless. My thought is that there is no gradual progression. Most people are not going to be able to learn computers the way that you and I have. So they need different ways of using computers than what we are used to. And that will mean a lot of disruptive ideas, which we may be suspicious of and call it "dumbing down". But what we should be more skeptical of is our own assumptions. So if average people want to learn computers differently than nerds do, what we certainly don't want is to cut off the paths of discovery that lead to the next generation of super users, hackers, and developers. Both ways need to be preserved and encouraged to allow average users to get the most benefit of technology, while encouraging the more in-depth learning by those who want to be more deeply involved.