I agree, for a potentially different reason. The author has not come up with a clear list of what a human needs to know to be computer-literate. Instead he's explaining that his generation got to grow up with the problem-solving necessary, so these kids need to get off his lawn.

He has very valid points. From the opening example: his customer looked down on him, did not present her full situation, and acted like her problems are everyone else's problem.

However as kleinbl00 put it above, he is expecting everyone to be a desktop administrator... and possibly psychic. Does she know the school has a web proxy? No. Does she need to know this? Yes. Would it not make his side-job easier if he wrote up a set of Mac and Windows instructions for visitors and teachers to connect, and what problems to expect? Yes.

Now comes the kicker: he should know that last part already. He wrote this entire lament, when he could have used the same amount of time to write a how-to. He gets some reward from dealing with frustrating people or he would have solved the problem. Part of the computer-literate nature that he vaunts is never solving the same problem twice: solve it once, document that, refine the doc based on feedback, improve the process.

He talks all this bravado about being able to cobble a computer from beach sand and meat sweats. It sounds just like an emotionally abusive parent saying that no one appreciates the work that went into making dinner. Teach the kids how to make dinner and that problem is gone.

Microprocessors with impressive infrastructure are everywhere, but they aren't desktop computers. The computer interfaces vaporize because they can emulate the analog actions they replace. A car has a lots of chips, but it also has giant buttons on the floor that you control with your feet. We teach driving to youngsters. They can't wait to drive: I remember counting the months until I could take my written test at 16, starting with my 13th birthday.

Even when acknowledges the above, and even with the hint of proposing an ontogenic network for students (Linux boxes, routers they can poke, etc), he needs to stop being a whinger. This article should have been "Why I wrote a proxy config doc with cartoon characters".