Many academic fields touch on areas relevant to this subject, from architecture to computer science. Perhaps the closest single exposition of many of the pertinent concepts is Langdon Winner’s 1986 “Do artifacts* have politics?” in which he discusses the idea that: “The machines, structures, and […]

Lawrence Lessig, currently of Stanford Law School, has been at the forefront of much recent and current debate on intellectual property and how the internet is constructed and regulated. His books, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace [29], The Future of Ideas [51] and more […]

To some extent, the desire of companies to control what consumers do with their products has parallels with attempts at price discrimination in industries such as freight transportation, and, especially, telecommunications. Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota’s Digital Technology Center points out that telecommunications […]

Two precedents from the interface between design, business and psychology are especially relevant here. First, Donald Norman’s influential The Psychology of Everyday Things, later republished as The Design of Everyday Things [32], formalised and analysed much of the accumulated wisdom surrounding user behaviour and interaction […]

Eric von Hippel of MIT has charted the phenomenon of user-led innovation, and how this has benefited both companies and users, in The Sources of Innovation [57], published in 1988, and, most recently, Democratizing Innovation* [58]. As discussed in the ‘Reactions’ section of this site, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]