This is a major source of cognitive dissonance.

Before social media, the average person had little to no interest in the internet - or PCs in general - aside from email and instant messaging apps. The internet has changed, but it's 99.9% because more people are using it, and their interests and needs are best served by 'it just works'.

This change, along with progress in general, has also made life better for technical folks. General purpose computing is dead? Come on. Desktop Linux actually works. Municipal fiber is a thing. Capable enterprise hardware is available online for less than a second hand iPhone, and if you don't have a couple of hundred to spend, a VPS costs less than a hamburger.

There's a large chunk of enthusiasts between "the masses" and the hard core of people who "actually care" enough (and are rich enough) to go out of their way to have their own machine at home no matter what short of it being illegal.

No self-respecting author would write "We'll always have access to typewriters without built-in censorship. Sure, we might not be able to pay consumer prices for them, but they are not going anywhere."

What makes you so sure the restrictions will stop somewhere you're comfortable with? What happens when unlocked machines are only available to "enterprise" (not unlike a certain Windows version), and you have to agree to audits when buying them? What chance do free operating systems stand, when 99% of users don't even have access to computers that could run them?

We need not worry as long as somewhere, in some dark basement, a sysadmin is able to assemble an unlocked personal computer from his company's old hardware?