Those observations resonate with me. This does sound a lot like the now almost ancient dream of Prolog/Smalltalk where you'd have this much more semantic and malleable environment to work with and shape to the specific purpose it needs to fulfill, without any artificial barriers.
And I don't see why that semantic singularity couldn't be local (or at leat private), instead of the current hodge-podge of "cloud" offerings trying to siphon as much data as they can – under the guise of improving the user experience – just to lock you into their version of the perfect walled garden.
For me, I think this picture[0] illustrates how I feel about this pretty well. The idea that the data, for lack of a better term, that we generate just via interaction with our devices isn't somehow useful is now a concept that I fundamentally feel is a little astonishing in 2020. The very foundational idea of the internet, that ideas can be shared via links and documents (and so much more now) never left me. I think there is huge room in building user interfaces that take this to its core. For instance, why shouldn't my filesystem be used in such a way that I can build links between applications, files, and sharability? Why can't this be extended to say, link inside one application to another so discrete application functionality is available regardd of what app I have open at the very moment? The idea that I have to "switch" apps is fundamentally old.
I'm not sure that I have all the answers, but one area where I know this would make a ton of sense is the simple note taking apps that I feel tech and non tech users alike use. The digital sticky note is something that has been strived for since the early days of graphical computing in particular, but alas no one entity has ever really delivered on it in a way that I would call 'semantic' but it perfectly illustrates a situation where I think this concept is super obvious, because you want different things to be linked for different reasons. And that fundamentally describes what I'm talking about, is I want to be able to have things be linked based on their relationships with other things, be it applications, data, etc that I build over time. The fundamental interaction model here is that I should be able to make these switches and those switches to have meaning when I make them, rather than the current status quo, which is I have to deliberate strike an interaction between programs or actions within programs, rather than things be linked semi-heteogenerously based on exposing semantics based around my whole "system", if you will.
And I don't see why that semantic singularity couldn't be local (or at leat private), instead of the current hodge-podge of "cloud" offerings trying to siphon as much data as they can – under the guise of improving the user experience – just to lock you into their version of the perfect walled garden.