>So, what is under the hood doesn't matter to the majority of people.

While I agree - the perception of what is under the hood matters to a lot of people I think. People buy cars and phones based on features they will never use or take advantage of, for example. 

>We must attract them before shoving new knowledge down their throats.

This is through the applications. They don't even need to know they are on Hive to begin with and I m hoping that at some point in the not too distant future, "Powered by Hive" will be the reference people know.  

I don't think many large stakeholders care about the day to day users, which is a bit of a problem in some ways, maybe a good thing in others.