[Thank The Cheese]

I'm siding with jh2112 on this one. I don't think he is saying people shouldn't have a basic knowledge of how things work, but TCP/IP and IPv6 is an "under the hood" sort of thing.

If you drive a car, you don't need to know how an engine works, but you do need to know that it is there, and that you should be changing the fluid and checking your tires and re-filling the fuel tank so that it stays in good working order.

For computers, I dont think we should expect everyone to know about the technical inner workings, but they should know about the stuff "on the surface" like virus scanners and network encryption and other good practices that keep your computer in good working order.

Of course, if you're talking about tech experts then yes, they should know about it in its entirety -- it's their job to know (same way that you would expect a mechanic to know how an engine works). Not everyone knows and likes computers, it's what makes life interesting.

This reminds me of the thread where someone couldn't understand how someone could not know the name of the computer they were using.