Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.
I didn't know there was going to be a quiz this morning.
Frankly, I didn't follow the leap to where this would be a problem for entertainment content, I suppose that this device may be used, in concept, to load and view otherwise DRM locked files, but did that come from the abstract that is circulating KickStarter or is that the author's speculation?
Also, were the ramifications of data collection your extrapolation or there in the investment brief?
Hey, this substitution of questions for opinions is fun!
But, I'm the one facing the quiz, so let's apply a rhetorical trick. The individual is responsible for his or her use of tools. Thus, not evil, or more precisely, neutral. Q.E.D.
Regarding device freedom, I take the point of view that while I may wish and have a fair amount of capability to use my toaster as a hammer, I go grab a computer book when something appears in the kitchen for which hammering provides a clear and present response. Were I to further digress, I'd exhort "Try and do that with an ebook or ebook reader." Back to the toaster: it's great for cheese sandwich after toasted cheese sandwich, but, as a hammer, I'd be concerned that I would transform it into a single-use device. A poor analogue as it relates physical activity to digital processing, obviously, but I do think it illustrates the point I'll shortly make.
Rather than reviewing my Kant, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Hume whenever an add-on device like this makes it to market (and it hasn't yet, this is start-up funding phase), I think it's pretty simple. If the device doesn't do what I want within a framework I accept, I don't buy it. Buying it and then spending more to adapt it using high-friction methods just doesn't make any sense to me. Ethics? Morals? Practicality. I bought the toaster to be a toaster and I carry this concept into the digital appliance realm. I understand other people are concerned about restrictions on mobile computers and without contempt or condescension, I wish them well.
For someone planning a business model around people paying to exercise their device freedom: I don't see that the market is really there. Because, if it was there, those Mac clone guys in Florida would have done a lot better before they were shut down.
OpenVizsla, a proposal to develop an open source device that would sniff out data entering or leaving any USB port, has gotten the funding to go forward.
The site’s Kickstarter page asked for $17,500 to start work. So far 304 pledges totaling $36,414 have come in.
The leader of the project, who goes by the name Bushing, is a founding member of both Team Twizzlers and the iPhone Dev Team. The name is a pseudonym “so that my employers don’t get too annoyed with me.”
Bushing’s own Web site is called HackMii, and produced The Homebrew Channel (HBC), which claims to allow hacking of the Wii game machine and to have been installed 600,000 times.
The credibility gained by developing HBC has shown Kickstarter users Bushing can deliver.
The proposed OpenVizsla device would consist of an XMOS processor, a Xilinx Spartan 3E chip and software that would intercept USB data and leave other interfaces exposed.
Why? Collecting data this way would leave proprietary systems of all kinds using USB, like the Apple iOS iPhone and the Microsoft Kinect, open to jailbreaks, unlocks and syncing apps of all kinds, and allow all proprietary operating systems to be reverse-engineered.
Two questions. Is this open source being used for good or for evil? And with the government now fully engaged on behalf of the copyright industries how long before they turn their attention here?
