The best metaphor for understanding technology illiteracy is that there are technology natives and there are technology immigrants. I am a native, for I have grown up and openly embraced computers as a fact of life. However, those elder than I have a more difficult time doing so because it is such a foreign concept.
Computers are not being taught in a manner that will actually close this gap. That is because learning computers is akin to learning to read. You must learn the letters and words before you can read whole paragraphs, much less Shakespeare. Currently, procedural methods are all that are being taught. Intuitive Computing is aimed at correcting that problem.
Crazy as it may sound; computes were designed with a distinct structure and patterns. Applications are often constructed to mimic other programs so that they are easy to use. Understanding the general concepts that transcend applications is like understanding the sentences that make up paragraphs.