If I had any faith in American school systems, I would suggest bringing back computer classes instead of just trusting "digital natives" to run into every toll booth unhindered. But they will be taught by old people who are even more computer-illiterate than the students...

What do we do about this? How do we teach people computer literacy? What would the lesson plan even look like? I'd really like to hear some suggestions from someone more experienced with computers than myself.

Would the final exam be installing Arch Linux? ... I mean, knowing the software stack of a computer in-and-out is kinda useful, perhaps, and the nitty-gritty of all the packages does that well... But the average person never has to worry about partitions, and there's nothing about an Arch install that tests your knowledge of browser cookies and adblockers.

"Back in the day, and I mean way back in the day, barely anyone could read or write. Nowadays, you can't find a single person who believes reading and writing is a useless skill."

One-fifth of US adults can’t read well enough to compare and contrast information, paraphrase, or make low-level inferences based on written text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

"The divide is not between smart and stupid people, but between people who can inspect the systems around them and people who are forced to accept those systems on the basis of trust."

I mean... a smart person can not understand the system, true. But a sufficiently stupid person cannot understand the system. So, it is a divide between smart people who understand the system on the one hand and smart people who don't along with dumb people who can't on the other.