Your wager is correct. The average user is pathetically ignorant of how computers or the internet work. I'll never understand why people eagerly try to understand how their cars work, but when it comes to computers they'll just throw their hands up and be proud of their ignorance, always relying on others to help them with extremely basic tasks. You don't ask a friend to put your windshield wipers on for you.
Read The Inmates are Running the Asylum, and you might understand that better. It helped me to see how pathetically unhelpful and badly designed interfaces are everywhere, something I accepted and took for granted before.
A couple of metaphors he uses, there or in About Face: Programmers are like those into extreme sports, revelling in the difficulties of working with computers, but most people aren't like that. When they board an aeroplane, they want to sit down and get where they're going without concerning themselves with the details. Programmers head for the cockpit.
