I didn’t think, waking up this morning, that we were going on a philosophical field trip. But here we are. The question was posed: Can IoT be repairable like “old” technologies? Can it be tactile and accessible rather than an inscrutable black box?
The reason this question becomes a thought experiment is that it conflicts two opposing frames of reference, that of human sovereignty and the second; that of the hegemony of capital markets in business. What I thought was a simple question became Neo versus the surveillance state.
Let’s look at it from the simple, Occam’s razor angle; repairability destroys revenue streams. Dumping service contracts means binning predictable cashflow. Wall Street does not reward “quietly reliable for 15 years.” From the financial side, you don’t really want durable goods to saturate the market, you like yearly upgrades and cosmetic color changes and designed obsolescence. Your marketing team likes to have something to sell, oher than it’s boxy, but it’s good.
Vendor lock-in is easier than excellence, it forces ecosystem dependency which means the scaling process is faster than my Dickensian “one hit wonder” across the street. Aside from the basics of bringing a product to market (which often benefits from repeatability), there are many upsides to disposable do-overs. Your customers can be entrained into novelty and dependency, conditioned to accept that if it breaks you throw it and get a new one. Less hassle that way, right?
Regulation actually helps the Big Boys in this aspect, because they raise entry costs and punish open systems. This double whammy makes the market opaque and fitted to the VC capital markets philosophy of selling fast and getting out quick. “The world doesn’t lack the ability to build honest machines. It lacks financial incentives to do so at scale.”
So, what is the upside for sovereignty? Where is the market for repairable tech? There is a counterforce, a market where reliability is worth more than its weight in gold, where failure is expensive and uptime beats fashion. This is remote locations, rugged terrain and “must work” functionality. This mythical land of milk, honey and M-65 field jackets: Critical architecture. This is where simplified “ruggedized” tools make the difference.
Repairability survives and thrives in:
🟧Heavy industry
🟧Energy
🟧Water
🟧Agriculture
🟧Transport
🟧Mining
🟧Defense
