Isn't the whole point of using these layers of abstraction over hardware that you pay someone else to manage it?
The only times I can imagine needing hardware on my desk are when latency is super important or when I constantly need to manipulate the hardware (change hardware, play in bios, etc). In either case, I would not use k8s to run my software.
Information radiators make no sense at all if you view them from a purely objective standpoint. Wouldn't it be faster to just open the web page on your computer? They only make sense because of the way humans interact with the world (and I suspect in particular, the doorway effect).
The last demo I saw for Pi clustering, the guy fiddled with the blink rate and color of an LED on the motherboards. Sounds boring, as a demo it summed up a whole lot of crap into a simple visual.
That person is also needed in the future, and that person needs to start learning somewhere. A good start is messing around with it on a few Raspberry Pis