[dataduck]

It's wonderful that you want to help your daughter through what is frequently a stressful and uncertain transition. I'm now working in machine learning, but I spent a lot of time working with students at exactly that level in the UK. I remember working with a student going into physics (first year undergrad), whose dad was trying to learn a bit of the lingo for fairly similar reasons. His son was responding badly to him - there was a lot of frustration and resentment on both sides - and he asked me for some help on being able to talk about quantum mechanics with his son, similar to the question in your OP.

What I said to him was: if you want to be able to talk to your son about quantum mechanics, you're going to have to learn to solve Schrodinger's equation in a one-dimensional potential well.

He kept on pressing about how he wanted to open up conversations about all the industrial applications of nanotubes, about quantum tunneling, quantum communications and cryptography, all kinds of things, but I kept giving the same answer - if you want your son to take what you have to say on QM seriously, learn to do the math. What he didn't do was to put in the 3+ years of studying wave mechanics and differential equations that I had implicitly recommended and continued to recommend. Eventually he got the message, accepted that his son shouldn't be listening to his opinions on the implications of QM on the wider world, and things calmed down between them.

The point I'm trying to make is that it is easy to think that you can run ahead of your daughter to be useful as a guide to her, as you probably always have done. Or that if you stay informed on the things that interest her, she'll want to have long conversations about them with you. But as she grows up, there will come a point where she's a specialist in her area and you just won't be able to keep up, and the only conversations that will work are ones where you're asking her to explain to you something you fundamentally do not understand. And there's no shame in that - I absolutely cannot keep up with the learning rate of people half my age and it's exceedingly rare to find someone who can. Your daughter is about the age where this change in dynamic should start to happen.

If you're going to talk with your daughter about technology, from now on, you must acknowledge that she is the master and you the apprentice. She'll be teaching you, which might be useful to her, but you're not going to be able to guide her on matters relating to tech any more than I could guide her on a career in medicine. Which is not nothing, but bear in mind your usefulness here is going to bracketed between the equivalent of "I hear NHS staff are pretty overworked these days" and "I know a great guy who's been a consultant for decades, do you want to meet him?" The latter, by the way is a seriously useful thing you could do, but requires acknowledging that she'll need actual guidance from an actual expert way sooner than it seems, and probably much sooner than you'll be able to speak pidgin-tech.

This isn't meant to put you off. Do read Paul Graham's excellent essays (http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) - they're very accessible (apart from the programming textbooks!) and can give you real context as to the human elements of the decisions she'll be making. But, having seen this story play out before, I want to help you avoid the pitfalls. Remember, she'll meet many technical peers and mentors over her career, but she'll only ever have one mother.