I think the idea is more overarching than this.
It might be more related to novelty and all the possibilities that a new situation put upon you, making you want to try things, to test, to play to find out what can be done.
That's the case in both freem's minimalist scenario and vain's SoC and single board computers.

Maybe we find current computing "not-fun" because it feels like a well-known box, like an aristocratic society of well-mannered folks with fixed rules and behaviors.