>handing (ideally) every white-collar worker the ability to write scripts that can automate pieces of their daily-work.

surely much of this could be done already with a tool like AutoHotKey? I mean it won't have some of the fancier stuff like screen scraping, but it gets you 80% of the way there in a lot of cases. the barrier is not the tools, it's the IT policies that prevent ordinary workers from being allowed to use them.