FT Alphaville
Izabella Kaminska, Nov 02 2016
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/11/02/2178646/in-the-future-we-will-all-be-rental-serfs/
Alternative title: When “smart” is a euphemism for vassal.
It’s probably a sweeping statement but we’re going to go with it. The technology which made the 20th century great did so because it empowered and liberated people, giving them greater autonomy over themselves, not less.
The washing machine. The vacuum cleaner. The dishwasher. The car. The record player. All these technologies increased personal autonomy rather than decreased it, whilst also endowing people with leisure time. We became masters of our domains and kings of our very own castles.
There was, nevertheless, one downside.
The profit opportunities associated with these technologies were subject to diminishing returns. A continuous pipeline of newer, better, brasher and more gimmicky products was thus needed to ensure profits could be sustained into the long-term. In no time, this gave way to the planned obsolescence phenomenon — making products purposefully disposable — in a bid to keep customers captured and dependent.
But with the normalisation of disposable culture, the environmental costs of purposeful inefficiency became self evident. This was not long-term sustainable.
So how did the techno-capitalist community respond? Was it by going back to high-quality manufacturing processes focused on creating long-term durable goods for the masses? Not really. Such policy would have slowed production cycles and increased upfront costs, and led to a major descaling of the global economy. Where it did occur it could only ever cater to a privileged and increasingly shrinking luxury-consuming elite.
Or did they, as Carlota Perez — the tech industry’s favourite economist — has long argued, focus on creating business models which service, maintain or insure long-term durable goods, as as to extend their durability further? Perhaps a little bit. But not much, because servicing stuff is a low productivity activity which involves high-touch skilled labour which in and of itself is difficult to scale, and (if done well) ends up being a self-defeating activity.
No, what the techno-capitalists opted for was a world where we the public would never properly own anything ever again. Or more pertinently, even if we owned the hardware, we would never own the secret sauce which made the hardware work. For the washing machine to do its job, the idea would be for the common folk to pay eternal homage in personal information, contractually obligated behaviour or general economic predictability.
To wit, here’s a story from IEEE Spectrum (h/t Climateer) on how the divide between what we think we own and what we really own is widening by the minute. But also how, when it comes to cars at least, the public has seen through what’s really at stake and not taken the attempts to disempower them lying down. To the contrary, thanks to significant lobbying efforts on consumers’ behalf, some of their ownership privileges have been preserved (at least temporarily):
In other news, Amazon has obtained a patent for mini police drones. Taser is considering installing stun guns on drones. And a car insurance company (Admiral) wanted to scour user profiles to work our personal behaviour — although Facebook (for now at least) has ruled it out.
Related links:
The autoignition temperature of manual cars is much higher than Fahrenheit 451 – FT Alphaville
SILICON VALLEY’S GOD COMPLEX (2014) – Nesta (Izabella Kaminska contribution)
THX 1138 trailer (1978)- Youtube
It’s probably a sweeping statement but we’re going to go with it. The technology which made the 20th century great did so because it empowered and liberated people, giving them greater autonomy over themselves, not less.
The washing machine. The vacuum cleaner. The dishwasher. The car. The record player. All these technologies increased personal autonomy rather than decreased it, whilst also endowing people with leisure time. We became masters of our domains and kings of our very own castles.
There was, nevertheless, one downside.
The profit opportunities associated with these technologies were subject to diminishing returns. A continuous pipeline of newer, better, brasher and more gimmicky products was thus needed to ensure profits could be sustained into the long-term. In no time, this gave way to the planned obsolescence phenomenon — making products purposefully disposable — in a bid to keep customers captured and dependent.
But with the normalisation of disposable culture, the environmental costs of purposeful inefficiency became self evident. This was not long-term sustainable.
So how did the techno-capitalist community respond? Was it by going back to high-quality manufacturing processes focused on creating long-term durable goods for the masses? Not really. Such policy would have slowed production cycles and increased upfront costs, and led to a major descaling of the global economy. Where it did occur it could only ever cater to a privileged and increasingly shrinking luxury-consuming elite.
Or did they, as Carlota Perez — the tech industry’s favourite economist — has long argued, focus on creating business models which service, maintain or insure long-term durable goods, as as to extend their durability further? Perhaps a little bit. But not much, because servicing stuff is a low productivity activity which involves high-touch skilled labour which in and of itself is difficult to scale, and (if done well) ends up being a self-defeating activity.
No, what the techno-capitalists opted for was a world where we the public would never properly own anything ever again. Or more pertinently, even if we owned the hardware, we would never own the secret sauce which made the hardware work. For the washing machine to do its job, the idea would be for the common folk to pay eternal homage in personal information, contractually obligated behaviour or general economic predictability.
To wit, here’s a story from IEEE Spectrum (h/t Climateer) on how the divide between what we think we own and what we really own is widening by the minute. But also how, when it comes to cars at least, the public has seen through what’s really at stake and not taken the attempts to disempower them lying down. To the contrary, thanks to significant lobbying efforts on consumers’ behalf, some of their ownership privileges have been preserved (at least temporarily):
You may own your car, but you don’t own the software that makes it work— that still belongs to your car’s manufacturer. You’re allowed to use the software, but in the past, trying to alter it in any way (including fixing it by yourself when it breaks or patching security holes) was a form of copyright infringement. iFixit, Repair.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and many others think this is ridiculous, and they’ve been lobbying the government to try to change things.Which begs the question, what is the self-driving craze in mobility really about? Improving road safety (something not yet proven or quantified) or creating a framework where control can finally and fully be ceded from users and transferred for all perpetuity to an increasingly concentrated and faceless capital and intellectual property-owning elite?
A year ago, the U.S. Copyright Office agreed that people should be able to modify the software that runs cars that they own, and as of last Friday, that ruling came into effect. It’s good for only two years, though, so get hacking.
In other news, Amazon has obtained a patent for mini police drones. Taser is considering installing stun guns on drones. And a car insurance company (Admiral) wanted to scour user profiles to work our personal behaviour — although Facebook (for now at least) has ruled it out.
Related links:
The autoignition temperature of manual cars is much higher than Fahrenheit 451 – FT Alphaville
SILICON VALLEY’S GOD COMPLEX (2014) – Nesta (Izabella Kaminska contribution)
THX 1138 trailer (1978)- Youtube
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