It certainly looks like all the raw materials are in-place and the cooking temperature just right, so maybe a revolution is looming. But somehow I can't see it cooking like the smartphone revolution did.

Perhaps we omitted one factor in our analysis: this revolution has the potential to emancipate and not to enslave. Being totally bottom-up, terms like "jailbreak" and "appstore" will become meaningless and rightly so.

Encapsulation breaking up is bad news for anyone out there watching. It's different to have a smartphone prepare a nice report on user's activity and sent to big sister compared to each chip on an arduino doing that separately. Can't wait to see a backdoor in a resistor, or a capacitor phoning-home - when they appear it will be the end for the NSA. Because harvesting can be equally easy but aggregating information, getting the bigger picture out will be much more difficult (orders of magnitude) in this revolution.

And so it will never happen, I say, except in the fringe/margin/background/underground. But I am all for it and I am happy to see more Pi(+Perl) activity.

We've gone from a statement "The old art of combining electronics+programming is scarce today IMO", then "Sure ease-wise yes I agree with you but who does it?" to "Somehow I can't see it cooking like the smartphone revolution did.". I don't understand why you are making this comparison, or what expectations you have. Why expect one thing to be as popular as something so fundamentally different? People can and are building their own phones, open source phones exist, open source SIP phones exist. The "smartphone revolution" was driven by large companies who want to make money by selling you a product, in some cases getting a cut for the use, while simultaneously making money out of your data and behaviours. Why you would expect the be able to compare learning how to do something (programming/electronics/building your own stuff) with simply being a consumer of something makes no sense to me. I dare say most people who watch motor racing don't actually race cars.

I don't understand why you are making this comparison, or what expectations you have.

I expect technology to emancipate and not to enslave. And that was/is the potential of the new generation DIY electronics. I am not comparing out of spite, "I told you so" or "mine is bigger than yours". But because I would like to see what impact it does/will have on that front and possible ways to boost it. From my point of view, it looks it has very little impact although the barrier of entry is lowest ever as you mentioned. Sure, 25mil Pis sold to day but I want to see them wherever I look freeing people, making life easier, reclaiming free time, and not for class experiments only (but it's a start ... albeit for 20 years now).

Why you would expect the be able to compare learning how to do something (programming/electronics/building your own stuff) with simply being a consumer of something makes no sense to me.

(I also said that) this revolution could have had the impact of the smartphone but it wont because the business model of "consumerisation" (appstores etc) and data collection will not work here and so it is destined to stay in the margins as "hobby". Which is a shame AFAIC, so, for my reasons, stevieb's project is important and should continue and threw an idea how to do that.

I have no interest in hobbies. I am interested to learn and aiming to share it and put what I have learned to practical use, primarily for changing the society I found myself in as IMO it is totally unfit for any purpose except a race track for rats.

Closing scene: Harry Tuttle fixing the aircondition in Brazil. And cut from me.