&gt; In the 1980s and 90s, knowing about computers was also a way for kids to &quot;rebel against old people&quot;.<p>Growing up in the 1980s, knowing about computers was actively encouraged by all the adults in my life (parents, teachers, etc.)<p>While some of the particular <i>uses</i> of that knowledge may have been rebellious, actually gaining the knowledge itself was not.<p>&gt; It was us who could teach our teachers how to use and program a computer, not the other way around.<p>For the people for whom that was true, IME, computer knowledge often wasn&#x27;t the <i>only</i> thing it was true about.<p>&gt; That&#x27;s gone now.<p>No, to the extent that it was true in the 1980s and 1990s, its still true now. Most adults (including most teachers) still don&#x27;t know much about computers, and its seems just as common for young people to be able exceed the teachers they are likely to have at skill with programming current computers as it was in the 1980s or 1990s. And there are plenty of rebellious applications of computer-related knowledge for the young.