When Everything Works Like Your Cell Phone

The Atlantic is running an article about how "smart" devices are starting to see everyday use in many people's home. The authors say this will fundamentally change the concept of what it means to own and control your possessions. Using smartphones as an example, they extrapolate this out to a future where many household items are dependent on software. Quoting: These phones come with all kinds of restrictions on their possible physical capabilities. You may not take them apart. Depending on the plan, not all software can be downloaded onto them, not every device can be tethered to them, and not every cell phone network can be tapped. "Owning" a phone is much more complex than owning a plunger. And if the big tech players building the wearable future, the Internet of things, self-driving cars, and anything else that links physical stuff to the network get their way, our relationship to ownership is about to undergo a wild transformation. They also suggest that planned obsolescence will become much more common. For example, take watches: a quality dumbwatch can last decades, but a smartwatch will be obsolete in a few years.

Comments

Re:Like most appliances for the past 40 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

> You mean, just like basically every electric appliance ever made for the past, what?, 40 years?

No not even close.

None of those devices were deliberately restricted. The difference is that before phones (and other manifestations like tivoization) the cases were the manufacture actively interfered with the owner's ability to tinker were few and far between.

In fact, congress thought that the right of owners to tinker with their property was so important that they passed the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act which forbid manufacturers from denying warranty claims just because the owner had tinkered with the device in ways unrelated to the failure.