We failed by no longer giving anyone the ability or even the right to understand their tools. A computer is just a tool to get things done. It's perfectly reasonable that to a lot of people, it will remain this black box of magic they'll never understand. But now it's a black box to everyone, including non-technical people who cared enough to know more about their tools even if they weren't their primary interest.

It feels to me that tech will eventually hit a point where there's only two ways to interact with it. Either you're a "typical user" who has a glass orb you speak into and pray that it does what you ask without shattering to prevent tinkering, or you're a programmer who gets a command line and that's it.