Mobile seems so restricted and I'm always amazed by how effectively distracted by phones people generally are. The games and apps to me seem utterly boring in comparison to hacking about on some open source project, making games, or working on something. Computers are fun, and were always fun because you could do so many things. iOS seems like a bunch of lame apps and a web browser with a camera somehow wedged in there.
I'm friends with a Computer Engineer who just finished his undergrad and he doesn't have the hacker spirit at all. I doubt he even knows who Stallman is and considers some of the most basic config a huge hassle. I don't think this is necessarily a reflection of Engineers in general but I always wonder why he studied computers at all. He doesn't seem to enjoy them.
I remember when what.cd was taken down someone on reddit saying, perhaps hyperbolically (perhaps not) something like, "this has ruined the internet for me; it's no longer for fun. only work" or something along those lines. I always think of that comment and don't really disagree with it: as this technology ages and matures the things that made it fun or interesting in the first place to me seem to be slowly getting destroyed. All these little battles keep getting lost and as time progresses it's just kind of "meh..". Instead of wondering what we can do with computers maybe we're finding out?
Proverbs for Paranoids #3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. --Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
I tend to hate configuring things and getting other people's software working the first time, but once things are set up I love programming and algorithmic work.
I can only imagine how opaque these small black rectangles are to the younger generations. Without a mentor, preferably a programmer mom or dad, I don't think kids would even know where to start. Sure, you can find all this stuff online, but the problem is that you can't learn much by just playing around anymore.
The real problem is see is more about the ecosystem though. The user controlled their pc (to a certain extent), but the user has so little control over mobile devices that they get fed what advertisers and companies want them to see.
It really feels like corporations and governments are sucking everything good about the internet out (anarchistic freedom of though, discovery of free information, etc).
What I see is a future where computer scientists and hackers are extremely powerful because they understand and (can) control their own systems, but the majority of the people are beholden to some combination of orwellian ecosystems seeking to control and profit off them.
Once again, this is why I think RMS was and is right and we need to start pushing more copyleft now.