I can at least understand it takes a bit of engineering to heave a nearly million pound piece of metal in the air. Twitter just doesn't have the same cachet. Hell, it's only 140 characters, how hard could it be?
I don't think Twitter is an adequate comparison. Even within the developer world you get plenty of programmers saying Twitter is a "weekend toy project" to implement. (And in many respects it is, for the functionality--the more interesting bit is handing the massive user load.) A more apt comparison may be with the Linux Kernel, or Windows 7.
I'm not suggesting one needs to understand the intricacies. I understand that aircraft are extraordinarily complex, and that's sufficient. I get the impression from non-computer people that software development is the equivalent of typing a Word document, except with mono-spaced fonts and highlighting, and lots of typos leading to bugs.
When people have a view of software development like this I usually retort by pulling up the Wikipedia page of a modern processor.
For instance right now I'd probably pull up the page for the Intel Core i7 and show them the transistor count.
I say: "You're now in a room. It has <transistor count> light switches. I write the instructions that tell you precisely how to flip those switches. You have <cycle time> to perform each instruction. Also it takes <x> instructions to <do some useful unit of computation>"
It's a bit exaggerated, of course, but it usually shakes their view of computers up a bit :).
Airplanes are usually come up when people are asked for an example of a complex piece of engineering. But rarely do they realize that most complex part of a modern airliner is the software.
Because they need to understand medicine when they make drug (the prescription kind) or other medical related laws, or chemistry when they make environmental regulations? Please. Only a superficial understanding of technicalities is required to legislate sufficiently effectively, understanding that can easily be supplied by staff who make high-level summaries.
They don't have to have an intricate understanding of medicine, but they should understand the issues well enough to be able to make informed decisions. If they do not understand, then they should bring in experts. For example, if you want to make legislation regarding a certain vaccination, then you should understand how vaccines work at a high level and the concept of herd immunity. Otherwise, you have no business writing laws to regulate it, period. The people writing this legislation don't have an equivalent level of insight into how the internet works.
In this video, we had a lot of people proudly proclaiming that they didn't have the slightest clue about how the stuff they were regulating works, made terrible and inaccurate apologies, all without bringing in experts who could inform them as to the implication of the law. To add insult to injury, rather than calling them experts, they used derogatory language to put down the very people who knew what they were talking about (lets be clear here, some people use nerd as a badge of honor, but that was clearly not how they were using the word).