An awareness of architectures of control in products, especially digital technology, has been growing significantly over the past few years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the strongest reactions have propagated in and been disseminated through internet communities, especially those at the intersection of technology and policy […]
Yearly archives of “2005”
Consumers’ reactions to DRM
If consumers are aware that their behaviour is being restricted, and the idea is presented in this way, then negative reactions to technology are likely to arise–to the level of an increasing frustration, perhaps even ‘resistentialism’ [79]. Now that she is a consumer rather than […]
Consumers’ reactions to external control
Some of the most extreme consumer reactions may be expected to occur where the architectures of control in products explicitly remove control from the user and pass it to an outside party. Perhaps the TiVo logo was inviting this kind of modification (left image from […]
Some implications of architectures of control
How will increased use of architectures of control in the design of products change the way we live? Depending on how pervasive they are, and how feasible the alternatives are, there is the possible emergence of two tiers of technology consumers–those who embrace products with […]
Case study: Optimum Lifetime Products
Despite consumer frustration when they break, many products are designed and built to last far longer than might be considered ‘environmentally optimum.’ Simply put, if technology in a certain field is advancing at a rate such that newer products use less energy (in manufacture and […]
References
Where a source is a personal correspondence or discussion, and thus has not previously been published, this is clearly indicated in the list of references. The views of individuals should be taken as personal opinion and are not intended to reflect the official views of […]
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to my MPhil supervisor, Dr David Reiner (University of Cambridge), course director Dr Bill Nuttall (University of Cambridge) and in no particular order, Frank Field (MIT), Steve Portigal (Portigal Consulting), Andreas Bovens (K.U. Leuven, Meiji University), Bill Thompson (BBC), Cory Doctorow (Electronic […]
Motor insurance ‘black boxes’
Last month, Norwich Union (one of the UK’s largest insurers) opened up its ‘black box’-based car insurance policy (see here) to a wider range of drivers, with a lot of publicity.
Self-enforcing speed limits, and control through deterioration
Interesting discussion at the SABRE roads forum on self-enforcing speed limits in the UK–current regulations mean that if a 20 mph zone can be created through a ‘self-enforcing’ architecture of control (i.e. traffic calming) then it doesn’t legally need any signs to remind drivers, other […]
Anti-teenager sound weapon in Wales
Boing Boing and MAKE note a New York Times story about the Mosquito, a speaker unit produced by Compound Security which produces a high frequency sound (less audible to older people) in order to drive away teenagers hanging around in front of shops.
Welcome : About this site
Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments. This site aims–with readers’ input–to examine and analyse […]
What are architectures of control in design?
Architectures of control are features, structures or methods of operation designed into physical products, software, buildings, city layouts–or indeed any planned system with which a user interacts–which are intended to enforce, reinforce, or restrict certain modes of user behaviour. While the use of architectures of […]