As far as technical details in fiction are concerned, I think they can enhance a story when they are described in a way that lets non-technical users image a sy

As far as technical details in fiction are concerned, I think they can enhance a story when they are described in a way that lets non-technical users image a system that at least has roughly the right inputs and outputs. I find that Charles Stross does this very well, particularly in Accelerando, Atrocity Archives, and Jennifer Morgue. From Atrocity Archives: "he'll have to enlist GCHQ and a scanning tunneling microscope to find it under all the 0xDEADBEEF spammed across the hard disk platters." Even without fully knowing about these concepts, you still get a rich picture of of a hard-drive wipe (hopefully the reader is savvy enough not to imagine anything too bovine). What this pretty much boils down to is the popular fiction writing mantra "show, don't tell".