YESS!!!
I think there are some tendencies within open source movements to develop the capacity for individual autonomy while neglecting tools for collective autonomy. On the one hand, there’s the image of the wizardly hacker who can pick up these powerful yet arcane tools and manifest their vision, all Matrix-style with streams of phosphor hexadecimal flying from their fingertips, lolz. At the same time, there are efforts to try to “design away” all the complexity inherent in socio-technical systems by making them easy enough for anyone—any one—to use, and while that certainly has its applications, I see that as coming up short of true collective empowerment as well.
I think in any community of practice that’s not specifically tech-focused, whether that’s agriculture or wood-working, there will be a certain number of people inclined to tinker with the tech. Admittedly, they will likely represent a tiny fraction of the group, while most others want technology that “just works” and then gets out of the way. But that said, there are ways that technology can be designed to leverage not only the technical skills and interests of those few nerds in the group, but also their broader social relations and role within the group as a whole. By situating those technical skills within their social context, we can leverage the full technical capacity of the community, not just one isolated individual, to get the best of both worlds—i.e., all-powerful hacker/magician as well as the ideal “invisible computing” environment.
Of course, that means looking at the entire “socio-technical stack” like you say. How can a community support the talents of a few individuals and raise their capacity so they in turn can raise the capacity of the group? In the past I’ve thought about this as promoting people into the role of paid technical service providers, who can hire out their expertise to build and maintain the technical infrastructure of those who are not as technically inclined. Increasingly, however, I’ve been thinking more about ways that such infrastructure itself can be collectively maintained, owned and controlled, which seems to me more resilient and sustainable long-term. It just requires even more attention to those “social stacks”, since it relies on the trust and commitment of everyone involved.