Fair point, but basic physics has been a part of our education program for at least 60 years. Also for few years the ‘exchange priced’ or ‘market valued’ electricity has been somewhat popular and on the news, which adds up to the general understanding as if you know your stuff it means quite literal money as your bills are smaller. So, maybe ‘absolutely everyone’ is a bit of a stretch, but in general the majority of adult people understand the concept.

And also a ton of common folk understand it at least a bit on a deeper level as basic physics is included to studies beyond elementary school regardless on what you study. Sure, not everyone understands (or cares) how 3 phase AC in here adds up to 400V or why you need to have 2,5mm² wires for 16A fuse, but it’s still pretty common that people, specially in a separate house, understand how you can only pull 2300W out of a 10A circuit or 3600W from a 16A one (10 and 16A being the most common fuses in a household in here).

Vic 20 -> C=64 -> few 386/486 units -> AMD K6-2 and a ton of stuff after that. And maybe something in between.

And now I’m writing this in my garage computer which I picked up from a e-waste pile at work few years back and it has more computing power than pretty much all the systems combined I had before being 18 years old. And when we (as a family) got our first “mobile” phone it was hardwired to a car electronics since they took ‘a bit’ more power than the supercomputers we carry in our pockets today (obviously Li-ion batteries were not a thing either, but that old Motorola NMT450 took a crapload of power by todays standards).

It’s been a wild ride so far. My grandparents were on top of the technology when they got the first landline phone around the neighborhood (I’m living in a rural area so it was not a new invention back then by any stretch) and now I can just yell to a entity in my palm to show me pictures from another planet or a high definition live video from Earth orbit.

And still I’m somehow trying to teach basic tehcnology concepts to both my parents and my kids. It’s bizarre to try and explain about benefits of touch typing to a 16 year old who thinks it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to type out an essay at school containing 2000 words in an hour (33wpm)…