People don't care unfortunately. Services are convenient and offer a better bang for the buck in the sort term. At some point though you lose your job and your music library is gone, you have nothing to watch because everyone streams and thus the movie/show selling market was never forced to solve it's copyright issues. You have no car because it was leased and you have no place to stay because the landlord kicked you out when you missed a rent( and buying an apartment or a house is crazy expensive across the board for some reason I still don't understand).
>Do we want to live in a world where every device is a black box that's only reparable by "authorized" personnel, where some hobby-level engineering skill won't help you prevent a 1$ dishwasher repair from costing 100$? Where every appliance comes with a plan, favors a "platform" and will make your life a headache if you disagree, serves you but also who knows how many other masters and economic agendas, and inexplicably goes dark because bankruptcy, bugs, hacks, your guess is as good as mine?
We need to find a way to make manufacturing electronics cheap. The cat is out of the bag and electronics and software will become part of everything. Maybe a smart fridge is a stupid idea now but it might make sense in a different context. I think Japan has been big on various home automation for many decades now before sv decided to reinvent the wheel but the cases I read about were much more respecting and user-controlled.
>Constant wariness and justified cynicism are exhausting and dehumanizing and will do their part to sap an entire society. We know how this goes in the case of corrupt illiberal states, but ending up in that same place via a corrupt corporate culture/state is also possible, happening as we speak even, and halting that should be seen as another layer of defense for the liberal order.
There is no liberal order anymore. Have you noticed how everything today is tense? Like every interaction has to be within very narrow and at the same time arbitrary limits? How everything even slightly political turns into a shitshow and not just online. Everyone has to be super careful of his/her personal ratings and there is no room to vent off and do your own thing because if society finds out it will tear you apart.
Connected straight to your smartphone without a server in the middle or not connected to the internet at all. E.g. make your bathtub automatically fill up with water at your preferred temperature on a specified time every day and then maintain that for x amount of time. Flush it automatically after that time if you haven't pressed a button manually. I could see coming home after work and jumping straight to the bath being convenient and this setup doesn't even need connectivity.
Maybe some stuff could connect with each other only via LAN. E.g. night/day sensors that will turn the outside lights on when there isn't enough sunlight. Or a monitoring panel( basically a tablet) that will tell you if your fridge is struggling to keep the temperature down( maybe the underside needs cleaning). That could also be used to create various profiles for your smart lightbulbs so you can get the exact type of light that you want. Slowly increasing in luminosity to wake you up or getting a red led-like light profile for when you want to watch a movie. Maybe a more blue oriented light to help suppress melatonin when you have to stay late. A coffee maker( using regular grounded coffee, not capsules) will notify you when the internal coffee storage is low. I hate it when I run out of coffee without realizing it and I have to leave the house early in the morning without any caffeine.
The possibilities are there but those that make these devices need to look and listen to how people actually live instead of just trying to impress with useless and dangerous gimmicks or try to get extra money by extracting data.
I find all of the seeming incoveniences are often interaction points, chances to bump with the world around us. Ran out of coffee? ... hmm, dig out an old stash of tea (it may even taste better), or stop by a coffee house, maybe meet a love of your life, or just live a 'different' day.
On the other hand, commute/traffic jam is indeed life-wasting -- it would even upset the smart bath-tub.
Notice that e.g. on the coffee example I specifically didn't suggest ordering coffee automatically for you or something. I buy fresh grinded(is that the right word?) coffee myself that I buy from a local coffee shop so all I would want is a reminder-maybe a specific text file where I input the stuff that I need to buy and the coffee machine adds coffee on it automatically. Then I can sync that file to my phone when I go shopping( maybe a couple of QR codes?).
Anyway the point of home IOT for me would be to get ease the mental load of keeping up with the house and maybe save some time with e.g. the bath tub( maybe if you decide to connect the system to your smartphone with e.g. a key exchange via lan you could tell the bath tub to extend the time that it keeps the water ready).
Services are indisputably a good thing and they are absolutely the way forwards. There is no reason for anybody to own much of anything and with global middle class approaching 4 billion it's simply not possible for the extremely wasteful concept of "ownership" to survive. Metering is the only way forwards besides catastrophe.
> Already, I mistrust non-OSS computing devices with their mystery-meat forced updates and non-removeable apps and barrage of legal agreements.
You've stumbled upon the actual issue which is nothing more than compelled business (in Europe and Asia) and what I guess the US calls a "coercive monopoly" [1]. The fundamental problem with Apple's App Store is that there is no reasonable alternative. Individuals and businesses which purchase IPhone devices are forced to do business with Apple if they want to actually utilize those devices to their full potential. Similarly developers who wish to provide services around IPhones have no choice but to do business with Apple.
> We know how this goes in the case of corrupt illiberal states, but ending up in that same place via a corrupt corporate culture/state is also possible, happening as we speak even, and halting that should be seen as another layer of defense for the liberal order.
Ironically, if you want to see a government who gets this "right" take a look at China. Chinese governments have moved aggressively to prevent monopolies and the laws were modified ten years ago to draw a clear distinction between a market (where all businesses interact freely and there is fair competition) and a platform (where a single business dictates virtually all the economic terms). This, along with the relaxed IP framework, is why the Chinese market is much more competitive and dynamic than anything else going on out there. At this point I don't think anybody seriously expects America's ultra-right-wing Supreme Court to break Apple's monopoly, but earlier this year there were a lot of indicators suggesting that Apple's coercive practices were not welcome [2]. (Though this issue might solve itself if Apple's market share in China continues to plunge.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercive_monopoly
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/business/china-apple-app-...
Also, I like the idea that it's not services themselves that are the problem, but rather platforms being used to force them down people's throats. Coming up with policy to discourage services seems much more conceptually difficult than rediscovering serious antitrust, a simple oldie-but-goodie.
Generally we need to stop this because it's a major culprit in turning our world into an exhausting, low-trust, paranoid slog. Already, I mistrust non-OSS computing devices with their mystery-meat forced updates and non-removeable apps and barrage of legal agreements. If current trends hold, I'll have to second-guess my fridge because it's also serving a grocery-conglomerate, or the insurance company, my car is serving the insurance company and the state, my toilet works for pharma, and my washer and dryer... well, it goes on like that.
Constant wariness and justified cynicism are exhausting and dehumanizing and will do their part to sap an entire society. We know how this goes in the case of corrupt illiberal states, but ending up in that same place via a corrupt corporate culture/state is also possible, happening as we speak even, and halting that should be seen as another layer of defense for the liberal order.