[saagarjha]

I think the situation is complicated. For hobbyists it certainly seems like the situation has gotten much better: there's lots of well supported, cheap microcontrollers and little boards for people to play with. But I think for the average user, the situation has regressed. I've heard of many an engineer who got into programming because they played around with BASIC and system extensions on their home computer, because those systems were open and easy to get started on doing that sort of stuff. These days, a child's computing device might be an iPad, or a Chromebook; they're certainly fine for getting work done, but they don't feel like they "invite experimentation" in the same way as systems of the past might've.

[photojosh]

My pet theory is that this view fails to recognise that we have moved to a culture of abundance* from the previous culture of scarcity. The lack of 'invitation to experiment' is 100% because there is an overabundance of distraction and lack of constraints.

* for the privileged! The digital divide is very real.