Being able to easily use the data from one application in another. Being able to learn one set of digital tools and apply them to nearly any task (copy and paste being an example). I don't think you have to be a basement dweller to see benefits from these, and there are others.
Ad hominem aside, can we dig in to this? What application data are you want it to put into something else and you currently can’t? All major office suites already let you embed between their apps, so what non-office suite task are you trying to accomplish? And once you’ve done it, how do you figure you’re supposed to interact with it? Does the native application UI now need to morph to this unrelated object?
We’ve had object technologies before in mainstream environments (OpenDoc, COM), and yet they’re effectively dead today. They were very complex, and the main pathways can be explicitly supported with better UX when the target apps are written with what’s supported in mind.
