I respect this attempt to create something principled, small and self-contained. Uxn is great as a "toy" system or a teaching resource but also as something that contributes to the diversity of ideas of what computing is/can be.

I'm skeptical about some kind of catastrophic disaster that makes popular technologies inaccessible (the pandemic demonstrated our strong impulse towards business-as-usual even when the world is burning) but having ecosystems that aren't as vulnerable to corporate capture and exploitation seems valuable in its own right.

The world was definitely not burning during the pandemic. That is something like WW1/2, smallpox, etc.

It only lightly toasted during the pandemic. Arguably, we’re getting more actual disruption now with Tariffs and Visa tit-for-tat