Let’s start by asking what an Apple developer, a French judge, Polish trains, Russian Porsche owners and the Iranian people have in common? All have suffered on account of depending on technology they did not truly own. If you have an Android or Apple phone or a Windows computer, read on, because you too could experience something similar.
The Apple developer was locked out from his personal files and professional platform when his company objected to a gift card top-up. The judge was locked out from all his accounts with American companies, including email and card payments, after annoying Donald Trump. As for the Iranian people, had their internet connectivity not been reliant upon state-controlled physical infrastructure then the regime could not have achieved an almost total connectivity cut-off. Had it not been for that news blackout, I doubt the regime would have dared to conduct such a murderous suppression of protesters, and I expect the international community would have come to the people’s aid much earlier.
So what does owning technology amount to? Ownership, as a concept in philosophy, psychology or law, may have many definitions. But where technology is concerned, real ownership is having the ability to exert full control over what a device can do: the ability to both make and undo changes to its functionality. Ownership means being able to do all that without needing anyone else’s permission. Many smart-home appliance buyers have discovered that anything which insists on phoning-home to a corporate server, even if it is only for setup or after a factory reset, isn’t practically yours, however much you paid for it.....<<<Read More>>>...
