As Cory Doctorow says, “Your home and life are increasingly full of devices that seek to control, rather than enable you.” That, succinctly, is what this website’s about: design as something to restrict and control the user, rather than empower and enable. Products that enable […]
All posts filed under “Restriction”
Deliberately reducing visibility at road junctions
An increasing trend among road planners in the UK is the use of fencing, hedges or banks deliberately to reduce visibility at certain junctions, especially roundabouts (traffic circles), presumably with the intention of forcing drivers approaching a roundabout to slow almost to a standstill every […]
Ed Felten: DRM Wars, and ‘Property Rights Management’
At Freedom to Tinker, Ed Felten has posted a summary of a talk he gave at the Usenix Security Symposium, called “DRM Wars: The Next Generation”. The two installments so far (Part 1, Part 2) trace a possible trend in the (stated) intentions of DRM’s […]
‘Breathalyser phone stops drinkers making embarrassing calls’ – LG LP4100
Image from kr.mobile.yahoo.com Except that it doesn’t, by default – as the story in the Times mentions. You need to set it to block certain “numbers in the adddress book, such as former girlfriends or boyfriends, bosses, parents and kebab houses” when the built-in breathalyser […]
Another pig ear skateboarding control
Nothing special, just another ‘pig ear’ I saw the other day, fixed to a concrete wall to prevent skateboarders using the edge. A more interesting example and, in a similar vein, the Anti-Sit Archives.
Neuros: ‘Freedom by Design’
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 […]
Embedding control in society: the end of freedom
Henry Porter’s chilling Blair Laid Bare – which I implore you to read if you have the slightest interest in your future – contains an equally worrying quote from the LSE’s Simon Davies noting the encroachment of architectures of control in society itself: “The second […]
EFF: Another Endangered Gizmo – the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2
Image adapted from Neuros website Via EFF DeepLinks, details of the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2, a product specifically designed to allow users to break through the arbitrary architectures of control imposed by other video devices and formats, and hence make the most of the content […]
Oh yeah, that Windows Kill Switch
I know the furore surrounding Microsoft’s ‘Windows Genuine Advantage’ is a few days old, and perhaps I should have blogged about it at the time, specifically the rumoured ‘Kill Switch’ which would remotely deactivate any PCs apparently running ‘non-genuine’ copies of XP. That’s certainly a […]
DRM now the ‘biggest issue’ in preserving information for the future
The Guardian has an interview with Richard Masters, of the British Library’s digital objects management programme looking at the impact of technology on archiving. The usual worries about file formats, media incompatability and how to select what to preserve and what not to are discussed, […]
Policing Crowds: Privatizing Security
The Policing Crowds conference is taking place 24-25 June 2006 in Berlin, examining many aspects of controlling the public and increasing business involvement in this field – ‘crime control as industry’. Technologies designed specifically to permit control and monitoring of the public, such as CCTV […]
Spiked: ‘Enlightening the future’
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 […]