modular phones, cyber decks, laptops with six folding displays, ipads with gpio pins
We have all that, although most of it from smaller Chines manufacturers. More than that we do have truly open source hardware, you can download schematics for almost anything, modify and design your own chips and circuits based on open designs, dream up your own hardware, and if know the right people in Shenzhen you can email it all to them and they'll build it for you.
The reason so few people take advantage of any of this is that it didn't turn out to be that useful.
And this is why we live in a boring, most stupid dystopia with bullshit tech. People exchange the walk in part in the war for a lead role in a cage, and it's rarely a lead role, too. I guess that's what you get if your paperclip optimizer is geared towards manufacturing consumption. It's just very sad to see all the potential just ... wasted.
While you're not entirely wrong, have you seen the stuff people are building with even simple off the shelf components like Arduino's and Raspberry PIs? Even FPGAs are within the price range of individuals, and small companies can easily go full ASIC for a few 100k$ if you want to get really custom. There is nothing stopping you diving head first into this world and designing and building (or having built) basically any hardware you want.
that, and also that this is all incredibly low level stuff. there's not hot swappable modules, but base components. also its very expensive and only makes sense in bulk to get them from China.
We have all that, although most of it from smaller Chines manufacturers. More than that we do have truly open source hardware, you can download schematics for almost anything, modify and design your own chips and circuits based on open designs, dream up your own hardware, and if know the right people in Shenzhen you can email it all to them and they'll build it for you.
The reason so few people take advantage of any of this is that it didn't turn out to be that useful.