> (A) Modern computers run on electricity [not ones and zeroes]
> (B) one could build a computer out almost anything that lends itself to both being on and off
You got it right in B, which is exactly the point when people say computers are just 1s and 0s. Computers are a mathematical concept, not just some electrical device, as you seem to claim in A. The fact that you can build a computer out of water or air pressure or Minecraft Redstone is exactly the point people are making when they say they're built up from 1s and 0s (not electricity, not silicon and copper, not Redstone).
Cut me some slack, I was referring to our beloved contemporary devices when I was saying modern computers in A, so the comparison is a bit apples and oranges.
I'm not trying to nitpick you here; I'm genuinely confused why "Computers are all 1s and 0s under the covers" is a pet peeve of yours! It sounds like you mostly agree with the statement, so I'm just not sure why it would bother you.
Because I have seen so many laypeople operate off the misconstrued idea that computers literally work like that!
Granted, many of these people have been around since before typewriters and phones were a common thing, but the ”1s and 0s” explanation does not offer anything tangible for people who cannot see the trees from the forest (sic), and thus it only widens the ”digital divide”.
From what I've seen the problem is more being that people just take that as the whole truth without considering more interesting ideas that are based on it and make it actually work.
But I don't think this contributes to a "digital divide", people who aren't particularly interested in computers wouldn't be more excited with different wording.
In my experience the best thing to get people interested in computers is to show them more than MS Word in school. Fortunately a substitute teacher was more competent than that and absolutely blew my mind with a for loop.
I think oversimplification is a major contributor to magical thinking, and magical thinking lends itself to continued failures to understand things, especially in the context where the computer is not operating normally.
Imagine if people generally understood that automobile combustion engines work by ”combusting fuel” without knowing anything more about their car.
That’s absolutely true in a sense, but if we left things at that, drivers would probably be inclined to think some kind of magic is happening, because that’s what science thought of combustion for a long time! (see ”Phlogiston theory”)
I wonder how those drivers would explain the functioning of the pedals and the shift knob.
> (A) Modern computers run on electricity [not ones and zeroes]
> (B) one could build a computer out almost anything that lends itself to both being on and off
You got it right in B, which is exactly the point when people say computers are just 1s and 0s. Computers are a mathematical concept, not just some electrical device, as you seem to claim in A. The fact that you can build a computer out of water or air pressure or Minecraft Redstone is exactly the point people are making when they say they're built up from 1s and 0s (not electricity, not silicon and copper, not Redstone).