10 dollar microcontrollers are way more powerful then pen and paper. In 10 years they may be as powerful as today's $2000 computers.
It's a matter of scale. You can do general electronics with some AA batteries. If you want to build a nuclear reactor, yeah there will be interest from others in your affairs.
"In 10 years they may be as powerful as today's $2000 computers."
That's been continuously true for some decades now. What might save us is capitalism in that the bean counters are not permitting $10 controllers for a toaster, those get the ten cent controllers. Also the cost of labor to program those is a limiter in that a mass market toaster with $50M of programming budget will be financially destroyed in the marketplace by a competitor spending $5K on "its a 60-180 second timer, nothing more".
An embedded swamp will form of $25K cars with expensive insecure software. Your car will get powned 1000x more often than your toaster even though the risk to your life is fairly similar.
It's a matter of scale. You can do general electronics with some AA batteries. If you want to build a nuclear reactor, yeah there will be interest from others in your affairs.