Understanding Technology Today?

I'm currently taking a delightful course at Lincoln Land Community College entitled Understanding Technology Today. It's a great course full of high-level information that is quite useful. I find the title of the course, though, kind of adorable. As I'm reading, I seem to have more questions than answers. I can tell you all about modern technology, and will be able to regale you with even more facts at the end of the semester. And yet, I can't help but feel this ineffable dissatisfaction with my understanding of technology.

For example, when I speak to you on the phone, our voices are transmitted as data across wires or radio signals, etc. What I hear is an approximation of your voice: the data. It's really only an extended concept of how the actual ear works. And the data that I hear across great distances thanks to technology, it sounds almost exactly like the real thing. What about when I call an automated phone system? The computer at the other end receives the data, but it's not like there's a person holding a phone up to a speaker for me to hear what the computer has to say to me. Or maybe there is? My guess is that the computer is sending data that is structured in a way that my ears and subsequently my brain can perceive it, but there are no on-board sound cards involved. I have no idea how many other people are on other lines with the same automated system having the same conversation with a computer that is replicating hearing and speech, or how many calls it can handle. I have no idea if it's thinking about something else while it's waiting for me to call.

Click the photo for an article on how consumers hate phone trees!

The more I feel that ineffable dissatisfaction with my understanding of technology, I'm finding more and more that it resembles the same dissatisfaction with my understanding of human existence. I'd like to think the low-level knowledge exists somewhere on the planet, and that some brain of a person can explain to me exactly how the automated system works, but something tells me that having a true understanding of how or why technology works on a truly fundamental level is a lot like traveling at the speed of light.