I think I've worked out what's been bothering me about the "malleable computing" scene: it's mainly white dudes and the conversation mainly revolves around making things more hackable for nerds.

There's no consideration in there of empowerment for marginalized folks specifically, or consent. It's only addressing half of the problem that it claims to address - for the other half, it sort of implicitly assumes that you're in a demographic where you're not at risk of your consent being violated, for example.

None of this is really *obvious* - on the face of it, the goals of malleable computing sound laudable. But as you read through it more and more, and look at what people are actually discussing, after a while it becomes apparent that diverse perspectives are sorely missing.

I don't think the goals of "malleable computing" are *bad*, per se. But I don't think it's anywhere near as socially revolutionary as it positions itself, and there is a lot of room for it to amplify existing power differentials, even if that was not the original intention.