That's fine, I ran my blog the same way for a while, before switching (back) to Wordpress. I just make very limited use of email nowadays, it's much easier for me to publish my comment in an article.

> I, however, agree with the idea that the common man should have an easier time of using these computer systems

I don't necessarily disagree, but the nuance I'm reading in your comment is slightly different. For the sake of argument, let's leave aside programming, complexity and purity (that is, the essential ingredients of computing) for a moment. Instead, I will provide a personal example:

I did much of my early computing using Windows, thus I worked a lot, for example, with the visual metaphor of "icon", that thing you double-click in order to open a file, a program or whatever. However, it did not take me long to understand (after, for example... right-clicking!) that there are multiple types of such icons, for example links; and furthermore, that the link contains, in addition to the pretty image, a path to some file, for example. At the moment when I realized that, my representation of that which I used also changed, it went beyond simple pretty double-clickable items to, well, something more complex.

That is, in the end what makes the difference between, say, Android and a classical Unix. Android has, for better or worse, simpler representations, that even a five-year old can employ, even before he learns how to read -- the fact that said representations cannot be revealed to the user (as Windows did in my example) is deeply problematic, however. Unix (or some other environment that you like) has, also for better or worse, much more complex representations, but said complexity is not accidental, but rather essential to the type of tasks that can be performed with a Unix.

From this perspective, Excel is an excellent intelligence amplifier for all practical intents and purposes, and it need not be used by "technical-minded" people. In fact that's the problem: had education worked, there would be no such sort of distinction as a "technical-minded" person. That is all I'm talking about: if one wishes to take ahold of the way he uses computers, then he needs to fully grasp the abstractions he wishes to work with. And I dare say that there is nothing ideological in this; after all, computers are mere tools.

I, however, agree with the idea that the common man should have an easier time of using these computer systems; we agree their complexity imparts little or no worth, and the complications are mostly artificial. Still, if I make the usual analogy with plumbing, well I get something that looks very similar to the present centralization, now don't I?

As one takes more ownership, one must also eat more of the useless knowledge contained within current computer systems; much preferable is to retreat to something comprehensible, like the Forthwrites. Just yesterday I was explaining to a fellow who struggled with programming, and felt bad about it, that stupid programmers love feeling as if they've not wasted their lives learning stupid shit, so they try to reinforce it, and this made him feel he should change careers; I believe not a career in programming is worth the problems, and believe it to be part of the problem, probably.

Anyway, the best towards which most can journey is cobbling together a lifeboat in case a usable computer be made to be feasible. That's what I'm slowly building as well, a distilled bottle I may one day pour into a worthy vessel.