Seriously CatGenie, you added fairly sophisticated DRM to a litter box? I’m a tad hurt you spent my money on building in a restriction instead of figuring out how to avoid constantly cooking poop.
This made me realize that I don’t actually own a CatGenie, I’m renting it. Though I paid for it, I have to pay per use yet I’m still responsible for all repairs until it craps out and I have to get another one. A tad disheartening.
I had written up a much longer post about DRM, advertising-driven monetization and where we are headed, but never published it, I couldn’t find the right way to express it all.
Jorge hits the nail on the head: manufacturers want us to rent the hardware we buy, whether it is the CatGenie or Keurig. They want to make money on every interaction with their product. And it isn’t just makers of disposable pod coffee makers, but every company. Microsoft and Apple working on patents to insert advertising into their operating systems is one example, the music industry salivating at a chance to charge every time one hears a song in their catalog, whether you own it or hear it in an ambient way.
Frank Chimero in the post Boring Future, Volume 1
Boring Future #3
Ten years after the introduction of Google’s self-driving car, it still shows ads for businesses in other cities. Everyone complains, but we’d be terrified if the ads were too good. There’s a mutual interest to retard the platform. You want a dumb ad network so you can believe Google doesn’t know too much. Google wants it to seem dumb so they can keep some knowledge for themselves. After watching a 15-second YouTube ad for bail bonds, the car starts driving you to the Google grocery store without you telling it you needed milk. When you arrive, the car makes you sing the grocery store’s jingle to unlock the doors.
This is the future…
