As a society we have become consumers of a technology we don't understand--and it's going from bad to worse. The evolution of the web and its related technologies has been so rapid that there has been not time to adapt/adopt. It has created a technological Tower of Babel and driven a wedge between those at the forefront of development, understandably giddy with the power and potential of the technology and hellbent on taking it as far as it can go, and those ultimately intended as the beneficiaries who feel left behind in a dazed stupor. That's the bad news.

The good news is that it this can be turned around relatively quickly and painlessly. The process begins by asking the question What does the average computer user have to know to be self-sufficient with a computer? Everything else follows from that. The problem is that we have a long way to go on getting a concensus and too many people want to make it far more complicated than it needs to be. We must begin by rejecting the common misconception that the ability to use Microsoft software makes one computer literate. The rest will be easy.