Everyone is non-technical when they start. I've noticed a lot of layfolks have this notion that there's some innate intellectual difference between people who work with technology and people who don't. <i>There isn't.</i> At the highest levels you may start to see real jumps in necessary intelligence, but the majority of technology (whether it's IT, Auto, Electrical, etc) is possible for anyone to understand, provided they start simple and methodically work their way in to the good stuff.<p>So my advice to "non-technical"-but-curious friends is: don't label yourself. If you're interested in technology, that's enough. Start with whatever subject you're most interested in. Grab a random article. Look up every word or concept you don't understand. Initially most of what you'll be doing is learning definitions, parsing jargon. Once you get the language down, you can move on to ideas. How do these things work, what is their structure? Learn the common ones. Learn the old ones. Learn the new ones, the unproven ones. Once you get those ideas down, you can move on to problem solving. Pick a problem you've run into. Look into how others have solved the problem. If they haven't, take the concepts you've picked up and give it a shot. Try different angles. Try going old-school. Try something cutting-edge. Ask for help. Finish the project. If you come up with something half-way usable, congratulations: you're a technical innovator.<p>There are efficient and inefficient ways to learn, but curiosity is the thing that matters most. Hold tight to that and dive right in.