Programmers Confused by Technology

I have recently been spending my time at the office reading sites such as jroller.com which has blogs written by other developers.

This has got me thinking about the type of people I work with. I work with people from different countries but my current team is made up of Indian nations. I have noted that one of them was:
1. Confused when I was using Firefox. He leant over my computer and opened up Internet Explorer and seemed confused that I was using IE 7. This is because both browsers have tabs.
2. Today he was given a chip and pin credit card reader, and he could not enter the amount in the reader.

Taken independantly I would have not thought anything of it but together it indicates to me I'm actually working with people who are doing an IT job because it pays well rather than because they have any interest in what they are doing. Working with people like this makes my job hard as one of the ways I learn about new technologies is through colleagues. For example I wouldn't have known that Eclipse was like IBM Rational if it wasn't for one of my ex-colleagues. Also if IT is just a job and you are not interested in how things work or learning about new things then your own skills stagnate.