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Democracy of innovation

Freedom to Tinker – The Freedom to Tinker with Freedom?

By: Dan
04-08-2006
1984, Arbitrary, Bad design, Black box, Bureaucracy, Business model, Cargo cult, Circumvention, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Control, Copyfight, Corruption, Creeping erosion of norms, Crime, Democracy of innovation, Design, Design engineering, Design philosophy, Design with Intent, Designed to be unpleasant, Designers, Digital rights, Distasteful corollary, Do artifacts have politics?, DRM, Dystopia, Embedding code, Engineering, Engineering design, Erosion of liberty, Exclusion, Feature deletion, Freedom to tinker, Future, Gadgets, Gravy train, Greasing palms, Indoctrination, Innovation, Intellectual property, Interaction design, Internet economics, Intrusive technology, Invention, Killjoy technology, Law, Legislation, Liberty, Lobbying, Monopoly, Norms, Open source, Patents, Philosophy of control, Political design, Privacy, Product design, Propaganda, Prophecy, Protest, Public money, Punishment, Regulation, Rent-seeking, Restriction, Reverse engineering, Stifling innovation, Technical protection measures, Techniques of persuasion, Technology, Technology policy, Technology underclass, Treacherous computing, Trusted Computing, User experience, User Psychology, Worldwide, Your property

An open bonnet At Freedom to Tinker, David Robinson asks whether, in a world where DRM is presented to so many customers as a benefit (e.g. Microsoft’s Zune service), the public as a whole will be quite happy to trade away its freedom to tinker, whether the law needs to intervene in this, and on which side: ensuring freedom to tinker, or outlawing it in order to enshrine the business model that “most people” will be portrayed as wanting, given the numbers who sign away their rights in EULAs and so on.

“Many of us, who may find ourselves arguing based on public reasons for public policies that protect the freedom to tinker, also have a private reason to favor such policies. The private reason is that we ourselves care more about tinkering than the public at large does, and we would therefore be happier in a protected-tinkering world than the public at large would be.”

Many of the comments – and those on the follow-up post – look in more detail at the legal issues, with some very interesting analogies to freedom of expression and points made about the impact on innovation – which benefits everyone – when power users are prevented from innovating.

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Review: Everyware by Adam Greenfield

By: Dan
22-07-2006
1984, Arbitrary, Architecture & urbanism, Articles, Book reviews, Bureaucracy, Business model, Censorship, Circumvention, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Control, Creeping erosion of norms, Deleuze, Democracy of innovation, Design, Design engineering, Design philosophy, Design with Intent, Designed to be unpleasant, Designed to injure, Designers, Digital rights, Discrimination, Discriminatory Architecture, Distasteful corollary, Do artifacts have politics?, Dystopia, Embedding code, Engineering, Engineering design, Erosion of liberty, Everyware, Exclusion, External Control, Feature deletion, Fightback Devices, Forcing functions, Foucault, Freedom to tinker, Future, Gadgets, Good design, Health and safety, Hidden persuaders, Indoctrination, Innovation, Interaction design, Intrusive technology, Invention, Japan, Killjoy technology, Law, Legislation, Liberty, London, Mobile phones, Monopoly, Norms, Observation, Oppression, Orwellian, Panopticon, Pervasive computing, Philosophy of control, Political design, Privacy, Product design, Propaganda, Prophecy, Public money, Punishment, Regulation, Rent-seeking, Restriction, Ringtones, Security, Shopping, Sneaky, Social engineering, Spatial, Stallman, Stifling innovation, Surveillance, Technical protection measures, Techniques of persuasion, Technology, Technology policy, Technology underclass, Treacherous computing, Trusted Computing, Ubiquitous computing, Underclass, US, User experience, User Psychology, Worldwide, Your property

The cover of the book, in a suitably quotidian setting

This is the first book review I’ve done on this blog, though it won’t be the last. In a sense, this is less of a conventional review than an attempt to discuss some of the ideas in the book, and synthesise them with points that have been raised by the examination of architectures of control: what can we learn from the arguments outlined in the book?

Adam Greenfield‘s Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing looks at the possibilities, opportunities and issues posed by the embedding of networked computing power and information processing in the environment, from the clichéd ‘rooms that recognise you and adapt to your preferences’ to surveillance systems linking databases to track people’s behaviour with unprecedented precision.

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Friend or foe: Battery-authentication ICs?

By: Dan
20-07-2006
1984, Analog hole, Bad design, Black box, Branding, Business model, Cargo cult, Cartridges, Cell phones, Circumvention, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Control, Creeping erosion of norms, Democracy of innovation, Design, Design engineering, Design philosophy, Design with Intent, Designed to be unpleasant, Designers, Digital rights, Distasteful corollary, Do artifacts have politics?, Dongle, DRM, Dystopia, Embedding code, Engineering, Engineering design, Entropy, Erosion of liberty, Feature deletion, Firmware, Freedom to tinker, Future, Gadgets, Gravy train, Health and safety, Indoctrination, Ink cartridges, Innovation, Interaction design, Intrusive technology, Invention, Liberty, Marketing, Mistake-proofing, Mobile phones, Monopoly, Norms, Orwellian, Patents, Philosophy of control, Political design, Printers, Product design, Propaganda, Razor blade model, Rent-seeking, Restriction, Reverse engineering, Sneaky, Specious arguments, Stifling innovation, Technical protection measures, Techniques of persuasion, Technology, Technology policy, Treacherous computing, Trusted Computing, User experience, User Psychology, Vague rhetoric, Worldwide, Your property

Lithium battery from Motorola V220Via MAKE, an article from Electrical Design News looking at lithium battery authentication chips in products such as phones and laptops, designed to prevent users fitting ‘non-genuine’ batteries.

Now, the immediate response of most of us is probably “razor blade model!” or even “stifling democratic innovation!” (as Hal Varian or Eric von Hippel might put it), and indeed that was probably my own instinctive reaction.

It’s not clear, though, that this is a standard architectures-of-control-enforced-razor-blade-model of the kind we’ve seen with printer cartridges.

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Spiked: ‘Enlightening the future’

By: Dan
12-07-2006
1984, Bad design, Britain, Bureaucracy, Cargo cult, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Control, Creeping erosion of norms, Democracy of innovation, Design, Design engineering, Design philosophy, Design with Intent, Discrimination, Discriminatory Architecture, Do artifacts have politics?, Dystopia, Engineering, Entropy, Erosion of liberty, Europe, External Control, Foucault, Future, Greasing palms, Indoctrination, Innovation, Intrusive technology, Law, Legislation, Liberty, Lobbying, London, Monopoly, Norms, Observation, Oppression, Orwellian, Panopticon, Philosophy of control, Political design, Privacy, Propaganda, Prophecy, Protest, Public money, Regulation, Restriction, Security, Sneaky, Social engineering, Stifling innovation, Surveillance, Techniques of persuasion, Technology, Technology policy, Technology underclass, Underclass, Urban, Worldwide, Your property

The always interesting Spiked (which describes itself as an “independent online phenomenon”) has a survey, Enlightening the Future, in which selected “experts, opinion formers and interesting thinkers” are asked about “key questions facing the next generation – those born this year, who will reach the age of 18 in 2024″.

The survey is ongoing throughout the summer with more articles to be added, but based on the current responses, I can find only two commentators who touch on the issue of technology being used to restrict and control public freedom. Don Braben, of the Venture Research Group, comments that:

“The most important threat by far comes to us today from the insidious tides of bureaucracy because they strangle human ingenuity and undermine our very ability to cope. Unless we can find effective ways of liberating our pioneers within about a decade or so, the economic imperatives mean that society’s breakdown could be imminent.”

However, it’s Matthew Parris who hits the nail on the head:

“Resist the arguments for increasing state control of individual lives and identities, and relentless information gathering. Info-tech will be handing autocrats and governments astonishing new possibilities: this is one technological advance which does need to be watched, limited and sometimes resisted.”

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Neuros: ‘Freedom by Design’

By: Dan
05-07-2006
Analog hole, Arbitrary, Broadcast flag, Business model, Cinema, Circumvention, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Control, Creeping erosion of norms, Democracy of innovation, Design, Design engineering, Design philosophy, Design with Intent, Designers, Digital rights, Do artifacts have politics?, DRM, Dystopia, Engineering, Engineering design, Entertainment, Erosion of liberty, Fightback Devices, Future, Gadgets, Good design, Gravy train, Greasing palms, Hidden persuaders, Indoctrination, Innovation, Intellectual property, Interaction design, Invention, Law, Legislation, Liberty, Lobbying, Monopoly, Movie industry, MPAA, Oppression, Philosophy of control, Political design, Product design, Propaganda, Protest, Public money, Regulation, Rent-seeking, Restriction, Social engineering, Stifling innovation, Technical protection measures, Techniques of persuasion, Technology, Technology policy, Technology underclass, Underclass, User experience, User Psychology, Vague rhetoric, Video, Worldwide, Your property

Following on from the last post about the Neuros MPEG4 recorder, looking on the Neuros website reveals something pretty unusual for a company involved in consumer product design – a clear statement of design philosophy, ‘What do we stand for?’ that’s heavy on content and light on vague rhetoric:

“Your Digital Rights and Why They’re Important to You

Throughout the history of technology, Hollywood has fought innovation at every turn. Even technologies that benefit the studios, and that we take for granted, exist only because someone fought the studios for their very existence

…

The more such legislation [e.g. Analog Hole Bill] gets passed, the less innovation consumers will see, and the fewer options you will have for enjoying your content

….

There are two opposing forces at odds here. On the one hand, there are exciting new technologies that offer more and more choices for consumers to access and enjoy digital media when and where they want it. On the other, there is Big Media and a few of its powerful allies working behind the scenes to limit consumer choices to when and where they want it. How this all plays out will depend on how the rest of us respond in the coming days, weeks and months.”

The statement even exhorts customers to get involved with the EFF and to get in touch with their elected representatives, which is again a great initiative.

This is just the kind of intelligent engagement by product designers & engineers with the political implications of – and influences on – their work for which I’ve been looking throughout the ‘Architectures of Control’ project. Whether it meets the kind of criteria proposed by Jennie Winhall’s ‘Is Design Political?‘, I don’t know, but by standing up for users’ rights in such an open and frank way, and indeed structuring its business around that philosophy, Neuros seems a lot closer to real user-centred design than the vague waffle so often promulgated as such.

Impressive.

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‘Fair use, Xbox hacking, and how far will Linux users go to get a cheap PC?’

By: Dan
24-06-2006
Arbitrary, Business model, Cargo cult, Circumvention, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Control, Creeping erosion of norms, Democracy of innovation, Design, Design engineering, Design philosophy, Design with Intent, Designers, Digital rights, Do artifacts have politics?, DRM, Dystopia, Education, Engineering, Engineering design, Erosion of liberty, Exclusion, External Control, Freedom to tinker, Future, Gadgets, Gravy train, Indoctrination, Innovation, Intellectual property, Interaction design, Killjoy technology, Liberty, Monopoly, Nonsense, Norms, Open source, Philosophy of control, Political design, Product design, Propaganda, Razor blade model, Rent-seeking, Restriction, Reverse engineering, Social engineering, Software, Specious arguments, Stallman, Stifling innovation, Sustainability, Technology, Technology policy, Technology underclass, Treacherous computing, User experience, User Psychology, Vague rhetoric, Worldwide

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, in ZDNet’s Hardware 2.0 blog, asks whether it is ‘ethical’ for users to install GNU/Linux on an Xbox, or in general, to use hardware they have bought in whatever way they wish.

“First, is it ethical to hack an Xbox or any other bit of commercial hardware? I’m not just talking about Microsoft hardware here… I’m thinking about the smaller fish that might have a good idea, but can’t make it viable to get it out of the door because their business model could be undermined by people circumventing any security they put in place.”

Other people’s failed business models should not be the concern of customers. If they’re buying the hardware, it’s up to them to do what they want with it. If customers want to do something with the hardware that the manufacturer has not anticipated, why not work with them?

“Put a free operating system into the ecosystem and it’s only a matter of time before users start looking for free (or nearly free) hardware to run it on. Problem is, it’s much easier to make a virtual product that’s free than it is to come up with free hardware.

While we’re on the subject of free operating systems (or free anything for that matter), it’s important to bear in mind that someone, somewhere, has paid for it, maybe not with money, but with their time or effort. There’s no such thing as a totally free lunch – someone, somewhere, always picks up the tab.”

This is especially naïve. It’s free as in speech, not necessarily free as in beer.

He then goes on to talk about how he “fears” that Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 Laptop may become popular in the west where it “is going to be attractive to a whole host of hackers and modders and could be used as the basis for countless projects.”

How is this bad? The more widely the system is adopted, and the more user knowedge and expertise that is generated and disseminated, the greater the network benefits for all involved, from kids in Cambodian vilages to kids in Cambridge, MA.

Indeed, a truly global, low-priced hardware system with a huge user base and huge knowledge base, modifying, improving and repurposing the hardware, including millions of users in developing countries right from the start, is surely something extremely desirable: truly the democracy of innovation.

The comments on the post contain some great analogies to help set the record straight.

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Architectures of Control project (2004-5)

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Written by Dan Lockton, 2004-12

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