What even is "small" or "human scaled" when dealing with tools such as computers? I still can't figure it out. It seems to depend on how much leverage one gets from the computer, and any insistence on human-scaling is prone to underestimate that. The Web is definitely too large for comprehension, to be clear, but there is more room to play in than used by Gemini.

I don't have any problems with TLS; one probably already has OpenSSL around. More or less TLS is too big (in popularity) to fail - there are smaller implementations like BearSSL too. If it really is an issue, one has a perfectly fine protocol removing the TLS wrapper; it won't be Gemini though.