I think there already is a subculture of programmers who value the lower resource use (i.e. power as well as memory/speed) and availability of free/open hardwar

I think there already is a subculture of programmers who value the lower resource use (i.e. power as well as memory/speed) and availability of free/open hardware that knowing how computers work affords. Whether that remains a niche or becomes more mainstream is an interesting question.