> WIMP and GUI paradigms are the exact the opposite: intentional dis-empowering

Are you kidding? WIMP and GUI democratized computing!

What "democratized computing" was cheaper computing and VisiCalc, not WIMP and GUI?

But again, VisiCalc is intentionally limited, it's not a all-powerful environment, on purpose. It's all about intentional limitations, making computation easier to reason about.

To put it more bluntly. Computer usage would be low if limited to terminal interactions and there’s no GUI.

Democracy clearly disempowered the monarchs. :)

It did!