Such a great great account. IoT devices feel completely out of control. They've long been a stealthied tip of the spear in the War Against General General Purpose Computing: complex computerized systems & devices, spread out all over our environment, but possessing secret programming, sending all their gathered data to big data centers. All of it done invisibly, unobservably. Consumers see & hear nothing except a highly synthetic output, mediated through a narrow window of the provided application. I continue to think push back should start, that it's in everyone's interest- consumers, & a market which is seeing adoption but also struggling to maintain the image of legitemacy while suffering endless hits- to change things around, & try to do better, try to be more open & up front & honest.

I mentioned Webinos[1] the other day, which was a really good attempt to create personal data systems for their network of devices. This particular mention was in the context of the car, but Webinos was a pro-user general IoT system for all manners of devices. I think it had a long way to go to be viable, but it's still the most interesting data-point I have seen, and one that I should probably try to write up better in long-form sometime.

Right now, the Connectivity Standards Alliance & their new Matter standard, built around the Threads standards, atop IPv6 and 802.15.4 low power wireless, seems very promising. It seems like there is finally some well known industrial knowledge we are able to deploy to make reasonably good devices, although like, Matter is only a month old. Not a lot of activity on HN around this work, but I really enjoyed the Gigastacey write up on this[2].

There are two core failures though. First, neither Thread nor the CSA's Matter are open standards. There are open source implementations, and supposedly Thread isn't that hard to get the standards to, but these are not open, advertised pieces of knowledge. These are still anti-general-purpose-computing devices, still not radiant, visible systems to users. Not everyone needs to engage at that level, but right now these systems all being opaque, industrial machinations that we have no window into: that's extremely hostile. Computing ought espouse better principles of foundational knowledge, ought try to be a clear, knowable thing. The other problem, and I'm less sure about this (because in part the specs aren't readily available/it's not publicly knowable!), but I'm not sure if Thread devices are actually inherently end-user interactable. There might well be a bunch of good IoT standards, but all interaction might still be channeled through overlay networks back to big data centers. There might be good standards for hardware, but no actual pro-user power derivable from that: this might be another example of the "internet" being used as a way to expand the control of closed, isolated, corporate servers into the home, with no real capability for those within the home to use their own systems & devices directly.

I'd like to see IoT become something other than this vanguard force in The War Against General Purpose Computing. It's disspiriting that there seems to be so little basis, so few positive signs out there. But I also think sea change could happen quickly. Pieces seem to be in place, or close, but we're still, right now, inviting alien data-centers into our home, and they frankly have a lot of f-ups & problems beyond that that make this a sad sad tale. Here's to hoping we can all eventually find a more equitable relationship to work with our devices from.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27463898

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121525 https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/11/smart-home-alliance-from-appl...