Generation Cooked: How We Lost Tech Literacy in a Simplified World

Why is the most connected generation the least technologically literate? For decades, we embraced the myth that growing up with screens conferred innate mastery. But cybersecurity specialist Omar Chaudhry reveals the great contradiction of our time: The relentless pursuit of user-friendly design has systematically engineered away how technology truly works. The result is a generation fluent in scrolling and tapping apps but fundamentally illiterate in the basic grammar of the digital world. This is the unseen cost of convenience. In making our systems flawlessly easy to use, we created a population of passive consumers "tragically prone to learned helplessness". Generation Cooked exposes how this decline fuels a global crisis threatening our security, innovation, and economy: This book is a vital call to action to confront the cognitive and societal costs of our simplified digital existence. Chaudhry provides the critical roadmap—from education reform to individual mindful practice—to reclaim digital agency, rebuild foundational literacy, and empower you to understand, command, and reinvent the technological world before it completely controls us.