[parrots]

People are afraid of technology because of the crap tech from the past 20 years. What do you think happens when those people stop being afraid? Suddenly software development feels accessible to a bunch more people.

I'd argue that people won't stop wanting to tinker, that in fact more people will start to because they no longer think it's impossible.

[dlitz]

My high school (1997-2001) reinforced this. They suspended kids from school for tinkering. And by tinkering, I mean "bringing up a DOS prompt instead of using the pre-canned IBM ICLAS menu system".