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By the same token we could consider watching TV just a higher level of abstraction than being an amateur radio enthusiast. It would be technically correct while completely absurd in the real world.

>> But kids these days have too many important things to do

> That has certainly not been my experience as a parent. They have lots of things to do, but I don't think much of it is important. It's just attention-grabbing.

I think those "important things to do" means "extracurricular activities", that probably isn't so important to you or to me, but we know other parent that doesn't let their children have any time for themself due to those activities, they are.

We're talking about learning a new language, learning to play some musical instrument, or even playing some sport in a local team. Both now and when I was a child I know and knew a lot of parent who stressed a lot, and stressed a lot their child, because they didn't sense them to advance in those activities and pressured them a lot to improve in that.

> I'd hazard that proporptionally far more people know nothing concrete about how computers work than did when I was a kid.

I think that's only true if that "proportionally" means "proportional to the number of people who have to work with computers on a daily basis".

I don't know exactly when you were a kid, but from the ZX Spectrum comment, I'd guess it was in the early 1980s. I guarantee you more people, both in absolute numbers and in proportion to the total population, know concrete things about how computers work now than did then. Huge percentages of the population of the world had never even seen a computer when the ZX Spectrum was current. Computer Science curriculum (and related fields) was still, relatively speaking, in its infancy, and the number of institutions that even had anything that could be reasonably termed a functioning CS (or, again, related) department was fairly small.

Today, yes, there are a lot of people who know very little about how computers work, even though nearly everyone (especially in the Western world) uses computers on a daily basis. There are even a lot of people with tech-related degrees who don't know the full ins and outs of how computers work even at a medium level of abstraction.

But there are so many more people who have had the opportunity to learn about computers because of their ubiquity. There are so many more people who have, either through formal education or otherwise, learned how an operating system loads drivers, or how a file system manages space, or how a program allocates and frees memory, than in the early 1980s.

I believe what you are seeing is the difference between a world where, when there was someone you could talk to about computers at all, they had to know how they worked in order to use them effectively, and a world where computers are so widespread everyone uses them, and so user-friendly that the vast majority of people never need to know or care how to do anything remotely like changing the jumpers on a SCSI drive or the dip switches on a sound card.

I don't think this is true, at least in the UK. The BBC computer literacy project meant that there were BBC Model Bs in every UK school, with tie-in educational materials. In the early 90s my entire class at a run of the mill state primary school took turns pair-programming LOGO on the school's BBC Micro. I don't think you can get more ubiquitous than every single human having programmed a loop and subroutine.

> For many today, computers are a complete mystery - indeed I'd hazard that proporptionally far more people know nothing concrete about how computers work than did when I was a kid. They have become magical devices that seem beyond comprehension for many, and I think that's to the detriment of everyone.

Yeah but did you understand how RAM chips worked? How processors worked? How registers and power supplies worked? Could you wire wrap a board? The previous generation of computer users knew how those things worked and often wired them up themselves.

Most of these arguments are emotional. We, as computer practitioners, are dismayed that the general public doesn't value our knowledge. But should they? Are the kids who actually want to learn about computers not able to learn about them?

I grew up fairly poor as a kid in the '80s-90s and most of my friends didn't have access to a computer at home. They learned the bare minimum they needed in the school library to finish homework assignments but otherwise didn't care. I was interested in computers and would go dumpster diving to find parts, but my friends didn't care. I'd say the cohort that had the money, time, and inclination to have computers as kids in the 1980s was much smaller than those who want to nowadays.

With respect to cars though, they are more reliable and problems are almost certainly harder for them to fix on the road or in the home garage.

It's probably useful to have some notion of how cars operate in general. But I suspect fewer and fewer have deep knowledge and certainly the ability/interest to do their own auto repairs of any consequence.

> my ZX Spectrum

I'd hazard a guess OP meant early personal computers with something like Win 95, not underpowered microcontrollers.

By the time Win 95 rolled around, personal computers were well past the early stage, and the Z80 was neither underpowered nor a microcontroller. So I’m not sure what you’re saying, exactly.

I'm saying that even an Arduino is faster than a ZX Spectrum, so yes I would place it firmly in that category as it wouldn't exactly be able to run anything advanced enough to warrant maintenance.

> By the time Win 95 rolled around, personal computers were well past the early stage

That's a matter of perspective really, in 100 years even what's modern today will be considered early.