I tend to get a little touchy about this type of "word" stuff.... Your right, mobs are often ignorant, but some of the key moments in our history of civil rights were described by one side as mobs.

I am not sure technical understanding is really the necessary item. I think it comes down to understanding the implications on your daily life. I know I get caught up in explaining the technical workings of things, but the best explanations to a general audience are almost always the little stories about what this will do in real life (tech example: technical specifications vs an Apple product introduction).

I guess I am in "the technical understanding makes it much easier to see all the implications, but I think understanding just the implications is good enough" camp. I am not sure this is a good thing, but with all the stuff in life, it might have to do.

Taking an example, I think the whole school webcam spying story is ripe for this type of thing. Really, I think the technical understanding is well above the heads of most people (including some tech writers I see). But, the implications won't be lost on any father of a teenage daughter. I expect that with our current media's prejudice towards the juicy, if the student who was suspended at the start of this was female and not male, well...