Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy

Beginning on the second page of the article, Lynch elaborated on the two basic views on what information technology literacy means (oversimplified: skills vs. theory). This is not exactly what the focus of the article, but it did make me wonder:

We are gaining access to rapidly advancing technologies and can learn how to use them skillfully and efficiently without having any literacy in the technology itself.

Certainly, this is not true exclusively for the present; this statement could be applied to people and advancements in the past. Early humans did not understand scientifically what fire was and how it worked, yet they learned to create and manipulate it for their use. I do not have full understanding of how a car works, yet I can use one proficiently.

Does the average consumer/user of today's technologies have a lower level of literacy than in
previous times? How much of a problem (if any) is this illiteracy?