There’s a interesting and insightful post over at dietrich.ganx4 about a career day talk to 4th graders that involved Firefox, the Internet, open-source, etc. It’s worth a read. A point that caught my eye was the confusion over what a browser was and how it was different from the internet. As support for online courses I often have to ask similar questions and I get similar responses. I’d have to say at least half of the people I ask don’t know what a browser is or tell me who their ISP is instead. I usually have to name browsers until I hit the one they use (usually IE). I see various discussions online about the internet being a platform and the decreasing importance of the OS and I think that’s not just talk. Many of my callers see the internet as an icon they double-click on. The search box is how they find stuff. Address bar? Never heard of it, and some never used it. I won’t try to guess how they would respond to questions about open-source. Quite a few of my calls end with “get firefox” though.