Guess so. That's the premise of "Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter" by Steven Johnson (http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-You-Actually/dp/15...). Though Idiocracy is a great underappreciated film.

Just agreeing with rogerbinns here - I think the fact that some of W8's new features and interaction models are not immediately obvious is probably the worst type of criticism. I consider it actually to be a confused sort of praise. Technology changes. New things become possible. Old UX models become outdated. Products are released which are different. People are confused, but then society adapts, and hey, it turns out that these new-fangled features make things a lot better.

Just because iOS is soothing and friendly and easy to use for the last generation not to be educated in problem-solving complex systems from their earliest walking moments[1] doesn't mean in any way shape or form that it is a superior interface. In fact in many ways iOS is very inefficient, and its popularity stifles real progress in computer interfaces. So we should be happy that a new interface model, that challenges people's expectations a little, is emerging.

[1] Videogames section in: http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Bad-Good-You-Actually/dp/15...