“The internet of things” gets all the press now days. If to believe the excited journalists, this is the harbinger of utopia, no less. Even Canonical is looking for some action in this space.
Canonical`s efforts are respectable. But it won`t help. Judging from past experience, it is very likely that we will have an internet of things that will be running obsolete, un-patched, non-repairable, DRM-laden software. It is the natural tendency of vendors that sell things, to prefer selling shiny new things to maintaining old ones. Just take a look at the mobile phone world.
Those buggy things will no doubt be used government agencies, hackers, and marketing companies to erode what little privacy we have left. Will we even be able to take things offline?
The EFF are making a preemptive effort to make things better in this area. I hope they succeed, but I have little faith they will.
Ifblog (ponderings 2.0) 