Hi EUP-ers! I was thinking about what are my personal fundamental drivers behind what I'm doing in Onex and the Object Network. I decided it was something like "bringing the empowerment we techies get from open source, open standards, etc, to non-techies". Open tech empowers us techies to do whatever we want, and to share that freely with others, not having to ask anyone first. Open tech was driven by an innate urge to break free from corporate bullshit and to empower the community. So what is available as part of some equivalent movement for non-techies, that empowers them and frees them from the Big Corps (and Big Govs)? Well, we have blockchains, IPFS, LBRY, Bittorrent, etc: these offer the promise to non-techies that they don't have to worry about censorship, taxes, copyright, surveillance, etc.. 😄 And we have classic EUP such as spreadsheets: no-one has to ask the Corporate Blob for approval to play with data and write some simple processing. And anything that enables user configuration, customisation, etc. So that's where I'm at with my fundamental drivers for my work. I was wondering if this resonates with anyone else here?

Open is a bit of a complex to crack... could be • In public, by default • Open to contributors • Do rulemaking as a group • Encourages forking of our work • (a dozen other things) Which may not sell themselves as virtues to non-techies - I like the sense you lock onto: empowerment - that you want to increase empowerment by virtue of being open or open-like - expand on those empowerments, specifically where they overlap with open One thing that comes to mind is the sharing of snippets, gists, codepens / repl.its, as a way to "help check my work", help troubleshoot, offer a better solution - something that makes the user say "oh, that's what I want to use to share this piece of what I need help with" - that internal move feels like one of the core embodiments of "be open to be empowered"

To continue that thought @Chris G, having that "sharing for help" capability as a first class feature is something that I'm very interested in. Both synchronous (ex VS Code Live Share) and asynchronous (ex Codepens) functionality built in to the core of the platform. With the above, live documentation (ex Airtable's API docs) would also be possible.

I guess you wouldn't get so many horrible spreadsheets if there were more (easy) sharing! (shared P2P, obvs!)

Resonates well with me! TBH I'd like some of that empowerment for myself too 😄 (so there's a big selfish element here, but I think its good for everyone, not just me) Most of the software/hardware stuff I own is so closed off. E.g. I recently got a cloud connected air quality sensor. Could I make my 'intelligent' bulb glow a certain color when the air is bad? maybe? If I spend a weekend or two on it, perhaps. And it would be so brittle it woudl probably break and I'd spend another day fixing it.. I'd like for these simple devices to be easily programmable. This is a lot simpler in complexity than programming those old VCRs, or drawing really basic electrical circuits (which a very large number of non-programmers can do!). I feel very trapped and locked out by most software and hardware, FWIW. E.g. I should be able to just drop a button on my phone screen and hook it up to my (wifi) doorbell to "ring" it. This should be trivial. Note I can do that with real wires on a traditional door bell. A wifi doorbell shoudl be even easier! Why isn't it easy? One 'on/off' logic isn't complicated. It's not even complex! It's trivial. Why can I not do that? The 'device is a spreadsheet' idea connects really well with me. I could just browse our home network of 'device spreadsheets' and hook them up in different ways. Maybe one spreadsheet can be 'buttons on my phone'. Can't wait 😄

That's exactly what I am saying! 😄