1. As the target population is the general public as well as leading policy makers and educators, technological literacy lies in the rich hinterland between political science and engineering science. This implies a need to reach out to a wide variety of theorists and interdisciplinary researchers. This abstract is itself the outcome of a collaboration beween a theorist and a designer.

2.  The authors' interest is in what makes society democratic not just in an age of technology but in a society influenced by any sophisticated body of knowledge. Feedback loops between technology and living systems are well established in the evolution of cognition. We suggest amplifying such feedback loops and evolving collective open source design. Open source solar technology as well as software ( e.g. Linux) are proof of concept for an open source approach to technological literacy.

3. The important issue is process, because it may not be necessary or possible to pre-load people with technological knowledge. This is a good thing since there is too much to learn. Rather, to teach a process that is democratic and inquiry-based so that in any given situation people can, and will know how to, get informed. Open source and collective intelligence are exciting prospects here.

4. The upshot of shifting the focus to the democratization of technology rather than adaptive processes to ameliorate a hopelessly huge knowledge gap are 1) we move from a negative perspective to a positive one, 2) we can tackle a doable task rather than a hopeless task, and 3) we have a chance to make a bigger impact and attract more interest in the movement.