@Matrix11 i'm thinking a lot about this. one line of thought here is a lack of internal reference points: having rarely conversations about the topic and its praxis and instead its presentation and effects.

especially CS is bad at interactivity that would shape these points for the external individual. many of our works 1. have a lot of setup time (installing, granting permissions) 2. require prior knowledge (what is a plaintext editor? what is source code? what is syntax?) 3. are single-player (one entity writes the code and takes everything about it in, with collaboration being only cohered later).

i'd argue we need more experiences that improve on these points, e.g. 1. run with what entities already have (in a browser, like https://typst.app/play or p5js) 2. have existing examples to remix and modify to take small steps 3. allow working together without overindividualizing ambient knowledge (typst has a collaboration feature where giving someone a link launches a web IDE where they can read/write at will).

i'm sometimes asked in trains if i'm a hacker, which leads to fun 5min speedruns to explain why i am mostly harmless, what a hacker is, what a cracker is, why and how to learn computer, what my ethics are and how public perception works. this *requires* some sort of interactivity given the short time. can be questions about preferences and topics one likes, can be a hands-on experience. i try to weave both in and finish our conversation off with links to resources they might appreciate

bluntly, tl;dr: when shouting at someone on the other side of the silo ( ref to https://www.buzzsprout.com/2396236/episodes/16592513-stepping-out-of-the-silo.mp3, "stepping out of the silo" by @grimalkina and @analog_ashley ), come around, hand them a ladder+tools and show them how they work rather than complaining about the wall just yet