Until late 90s, a basic engineering degree from a good school, plus a bunch of extra pop science and tech news reading, really was enough to give you at least rudimentary understanding of everything human-made.
Then the shit hit the fan and everything got Clarke’s Law magical.
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For a few weeks in 1998 or so, I felt I had a handle on like 95% of all tech. Not that I could work with it all, but I had enough depth/breadth that almost nothing mystified me (iirc holography was an exception)
Downhill from there. Am back at grok-fraction of 12y-old me, ~35%.

