The rapid proliferation of sensors, connected objects, and generative AI is transforming everyday environments into complex, interconnected digital ecosystems, reshaping how we interact with them. While these developments offer promising opportunities to enhance comfort, efficiency, and assistance through smart objects, services, and robots, they also risk creating opaque, centralised, and inaccessible systems that users struggle to understand or control. This talk explores strategies to democratise intelligent ecosystems of people, objects, and robots by making them more transparent, customisable, and inclusive. I will discuss design concepts and interactive tools that aim to support end-user development, interpretable automations, conversational agents, and participatory approaches, in order to empower individuals to adapt the behaviour of connected objects and robotic assistants to their own goals. Through examples and case studies from several projects, the talk will discuss possible approaches that can promote human control and social good across diverse settings, including smart homes and cognitive training for older adults. Overall, the talk aims to stimulate discussion on the key challenges in opening up control over these ecosystems to broader communities and outline a vision for more equitable and human-centred digital futures.