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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.
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,
You mean, just like basically every electric appliance ever made for the past, what?, 40 years?
My washing machine, fridge, rice cooker, air conditioner, TV, HiFi, radio, electronic alarm clock, etc, ALL comes with "all kinds of restrictions on their possible physical capabilities" and I can't take them apart without voiding their warranty. Most of them have logic circuits, or even CPU, running inside, which I have no way to download ANY software into them.
I have no way of knowing if I am able to utilize EVERY bit of their physical capabilities. Can I, say, tell my rice cooker to heat up beyond its preset safety limit? I would think its heating element should be capable of reaching temperatures way more than cooker normally allows it to before shutting it off. Hey, that's a "restrictions on its possible physical capabilities"! Can I download software into my of PAL TV so it can accept NTSC signal? Can I change the software of my electronic alarm clock to do more?
Gee, so now instead of every lazy journalist just rerunning old stories by add "... on the Internet!", now they rerun old stories by add "... on the smartphone!"?
Oliver.
The authors say this will fundamentally change the concept of what it means to own and control your possessions.
So the authors are considering a future where we have to replace all our domestic appliances every 2 years, simply because someone somewhere has decided that the control software *must* have this new feature (that nobody asked for) and that it will only run on version X. You now have 3 months to toss the old fridge / cooker / vacuum cleaner / lightbulb before it gets automatically bricked. Even though it performs its primary function perfectly.
No thank you.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Very true. I have a cheap Casio watch that I've had since the 1980s. The band long-ago broke, but I replaced it with a belt-loop hook. I can only recall changing the battery twice. It runs a tiny bit fast (several seconds a month), but until it completely dies, I see no reason to replace it for telling time at a glance (something that can't be done with a smartphone). Plus, if I lose it, I don't care (I've gotten more than my money's worth out of it) and nobody wants to steal it.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Nope.
You buy phones like others do, because it's a symbol that's always visible. You aren't going to be lugging pots around or inviting every friend/acquaintance/colleague/boss in your kitchen to see them. Same for washing machines, fridges and whatever.
Also ... they'll have to be REAL moneymakers to relieve the research and marketing costs. You can do that by reducing quality & maintaining prices, maintaining quality & increasing prices or ... make a giant leap of faith and risk millions by subsidizing the products and changing neither quality nor prices.
It's just stupid hype like 3D TV, which actually provided some value, though poorly implemented (tech not ready)
Then you will truly be little brother.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
What kind of phone does he own?
Isn't it obvious? he doesn't own the phone and he doesn't know what he is paying his operator for.
It's fairly obvious the author is an american sheeple - who "buys" a 700 bucks cellphone for fifty bucks. never mind that he doesn't actually buy it, just sort of rents it, along with buying internet that he can sort of use only on the sort of devices the operator wants or he can pay extra. I'm fairly certain he also has an UNLIMITED high speed internet on his phone, limited only by a megabyte limit the operator put on there(but don't be scared! the limit is more than what their customers on average use! so next month the limit can be made even lower and the speed even faster, never mind that it's impossible customers to use more than the limit on average.)
it's not about "when everything is like your cellphone" - it's an article about when americans will pay for coke by subscription... and rent their cars with mileage limits.. while thinking they get a good deal while getting shafted.
it's fucking horrendous to read american reviews on cellphones because 99% of the time the reviewer actually thinks the iphone costs fifty or hundred bucks - while he is actually reviewing a 700 dollar product and then comparing them to something that actually factually costs under 100 bucks to own!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.