When has this ever happened? As technologies approach the refinement of appliances, it looks to me like the general understanding plummets. Under-the-hood complexity all but kills the tinker class and buries the professional class in detail that further muddies their attempts to talk to the average person.
Consider hardware issues. In absolute numbers there may be more hardware tinkers than 25 years ago. But as a ratio of technologists, they're shrinking. And as relevant to popular opinion and voting, the general public has no more (though not clearly less) understanding or appreciation for hardware freedom issues. Trusted computing, the issue of yesterday's hardware freedom battles, is simply the reality of mobile computing.
15 years ago I'd be agreeing with you. But the drunk driving checkpoints, the Patriot Act checkpoints, border security and the TSA nonsense makes it a little difficult for me to trust the public's ability to recognize serving a special interest for what it is, when it's bearing a promise that honest citizens have nothing to fear.
If the RIAA were lobbying for checkpoints, if they insisted it would only affect "rogue" streets and that the critics of their proposal were just those who profited from the flow of illegal goods, I honestly would not feel comfortable enough to bet money on whether people pushed back.
Everyone always thinks these things will make things better for them, while assuming it will cost them nothing.
And as always, some hawk will be saying 'won't someone think of the children'.
When you buy a car, you don't need to worry about whether getting an oil change from Jiffy Lube will get you in trouble the next time you take the car to the dealer for repairs. Those issues are settled, but not for cyberspace. When you buy software or hardware that includes software, no assumptions are safe, and you have to know quite a bit about the law and technology to figure out what your rights might be.
I'm not sure this is true. I'm not saying it isn't, but it's at least not obvious. (Unless you're counting, say, anybody who today owns a smartphone as a technologist.)
When I started programming 20 years ago, pretty much anyone who worked at any level with computers could build a PC. These days, half the programmers I know can barely maintain their machines, let alone build one from parts. [1]
If you told them they should oppose some piece of legislation because it would bar them from loading whatever OS they wanted on the hardware they purchased, they would (and do) shrug. They fully consider their choice to be synonymous with the hardware they bought in the first place. They don't think it at all odd that Android phones ship with locked bootloaders.
[1] I don't mean to disparage them; some of them are fantastic programmers. That said, I do know far too many of them who are running home wifi with whatever configuration the Comcast/UVerse guy set up.
How many folks do I have to explain why the Open Systems Interconnect network model doesn't match what happens with TCP/IP over the wire?
I do think that we've create a class of specialists who protect their specialties in part through obfuscation.
The thing about "understanding" and "misunderstanding" is that since any censorship approach would break the web, any effort at censorship benefits from "playing dumb", not describing the complexity of the situation and instead reducing things to simple claims like "we need to stop the bad stuff on the net..."
The one thing that might help us in twenty years is that public might be sophisticated enough to not be as easily fooled by such claims. On the other hand, seventy years of an automobile-based society has not made everyone into auto mechanics...
If anything, future voters who are being born today will grow up with internet services intwined in their lives, and may be even less understanding of the free and open nature of the internet. They may be broadly brand-loyal to an internet property that doesn't yet exist. Imagine a Facebook size company that is for SOPA-like laws because it is funded by vested interests.
No, I'm not optimistic about these things getting better over time. I actually think it needs a second-amendment type intervention to cut off these types of approaches in the future. 'The right to keep and bear websites' - that type of thing.
On the other hand, one thing the internet is good at is routing around attempts to damage it. I can see alternative systems popping up quickly to counteract any regulatory damage to DNS.
If I said it to your ancestors in 1911, would they understand what I mean?
Over time, the median understanding across the majority of the world of any particular technology goes up as more people get exposed to it and its intricacies. As I understand it, Matt is saying that a larger majority of the world will understand the details behind the internet and its vulnerabilities, thus making it easier to communicate why the issues are important.
It speaks to a larger problem with the American political system, in my opinion, which is that the decisions that affect the next two or three generations are being made by people who came of age two or three generations ago, giving the status quo an undesirable inertia.