The typical “scale” mindset is almost the opposite of that — the people doing the scaling are the ones with agency, and the rest get served slop they didn’t choose!
If the system is an unreliable demo, then that can promote agency. In the same way that you could fix your car 40 years ago, but you can’t now, because of scaled corporate processes.
Not necessarily "scaling", but the point stands. If the goal is enable agency, then obviously you want that to happen in multiple places!
I love the project but it's nearly a decade old and still lives in one location or places Bret's directly collaborated with like the biolab. [0]
[0] https://dynamicland.org/2023/Improvising_cellular_playground...
If you really wanted to play around with similar ideas it doesn't take a needing to do a full reimplemention of the reactive engine.
You can fix your car just fine - just not the electronics. And those were to a large degree added for safety reasons. It is due to the complexity that they are difficult or impossible to fix.
This isn't about the cost; they already pay the cost to write the documentation or software for their own dealerships. It isn't about other carmakers; any company large enough to actually make a car would have no trouble getting a copy of it from one of the dealers. The only reason it's not published on their websites is that they don't want the vehicle owners and independent mechanics to have it, which is spiteful and obnoxious.