3 ms·

I worked in mobile video in 2009-2010 and was chummy with our CEO who was hobnobbing with all the mobile device manufacturer executives. We did headline work fo

I worked in mobile video in 2009-2010 and was chummy with our CEO who was hobnobbing with all the mobile device manufacturer executives. We did headline work for HTC, LG, Nokia, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, etc. and sold to HTC in late 2010. The way he explained it, the mobile phone industry in many markets, particularly the US, used to be such that the customer was owned by the carrier. iPhone changed the status quo in 2007: Apple could pick and choose carriers on their terms, the smartphone class device became a primary network interface for the customer, and the customer was effectively owned by the device manufacturer. This was a huge threat to Google, but also the carriers. Android launched in 2009 as Google's hugely successful ally in their response to commodify their complement. Google politically aligned themselves with carriers and the status quo and maintained a 'half-open' rapid-change policy which has created constant API and language churn. Great potential futures from recent smartphone history like Samsung Dex (phone-based dockable Linux workstations), wireless mesh networking as a first-class connectivity paradigm and standards-based IOT control never had a chance to mature. By now we could be running UUCPesque media feeds over local ad-hoc wifi with free educational resources, reliable dockable workstations in our pocket and a self-organizing community economy rewarding social and environmental values. Instead we pay for VPNs and watch TikTok while our right to repair, understand or modify are wholly eroded under the auspices of an "open" platform shepherded by well-paid corporate lawyers and doublespeak. The phone industry is absolutely terrible now. It's like a conspiracy against society focused on capturing consumer attention, surveilling consumers, using them as intelligence nodes for building global wireless infrastructure maps and media OSINT and actively preventing off-carrier cooperation among the population. We desperately need open mobile hardware.

oblio 5y ago
> We desperately need open mobile hardware. There's no money in it. It's dead on arrival. I'd be glad to be proven wrong.
- contingencies 5y ago
  Yes, it's easy to say it will never work. I believe if we commodify the hardware, like the PC era, then we can create a platform which is both cheap to innovate for, more environmentally sustainable and more commercially competitive. It can work. A commercial challenge is that everyone wants the slim integrated thing as a faux-fashion accessory and there's significant costs and there are power and waterproofing concerns with mobile hardware which are technically more difficult to guarantee with a modular architecture. OTOH, as consumers increasingly demand a right to repair and get sick of forking out for the same phones with slightly better specs every 2 years, it might just begin to work out...
lern_too_spel 5y ago
> By now we could be running UUCPesque media feeds over local ad-hoc wifi with free educational resources, reliable dockable workstations in our pocket and a self-organizing community economy rewarding social and environmental values. You can build your dream on Android right now. It provides all the basic infrastructure to make it possible. The reality is that not enough people share your dream to make it viable.
- contingencies 5y ago
  Look harder and you will find that the base permissions model and connectivity paradigms within Android greatly frustrate this range of outcomes and the political will amongst the project for changing this does not exist as it runs counter to the centralised monitoring and personalized advertising income stream of Google. Attempting to simultaneously cajole multiple large-scale device manufacturers to add a non-standard addition at breakneck hardware and OS release pace would be virtually impossible. The fact that drivers are bundled with OS releases thus making third party system upgrades extremely tedious to create for any given hardware revision is not an accident but a designed process element to better aggregate control. Therefore, while the outcome is objectively barred, corporate can still doublespeak an "open" platform. Google is evil. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    > Look harder and you will find that the base permissions model and connectivity paradigms within Android greatly frustrate this range of outcomes and the political will amongst the project for changing this does not exist as it runs counter to the centralised monitoring and personalized advertising income stream of Google. In what way? Everything you said can be built on Android right now. > Attempting to simultaneously cajole multiple large-scale device manufacturers to add a non-standard addition at breakneck hardware and OS release pace would be virtually impossible. This is not necessary to implement the idea. > The fact that drivers are bundled with OS releases thus making third party system upgrades extremely tedious to create for any given hardware revision is not an accident You don't have to use that hardware. Android supports hardware that has open drivers.

oblio 5y ago

> We desperately need open mobile hardware. There's no money in it. It's dead on arrival. I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

contingencies 5y ago
Yes, it's easy to say it will never work. I believe if we commodify the hardware, like the PC era, then we can create a platform which is both cheap to innovate for, more environmentally sustainable and more commercially competitive. It can work. A commercial challenge is that everyone wants the slim integrated thing as a faux-fashion accessory and there's significant costs and there are power and waterproofing concerns with mobile hardware which are technically more difficult to guarantee with a modular architecture. OTOH, as consumers increasingly demand a right to repair and get sick of forking out for the same phones with slightly better specs every 2 years, it might just begin to work out...

lern_too_spel 5y ago

> By now we could be running UUCPesque media feeds over local ad-hoc wifi with free educational resources, reliable dockable workstations in our pocket and a self-organizing community economy rewarding social and environmental values. You can build your dream on Android right now. It provides all the basic infrastructure to make it possible. The reality is that not enough people share your dream to make it viable.

contingencies 5y ago
Look harder and you will find that the base permissions model and connectivity paradigms within Android greatly frustrate this range of outcomes and the political will amongst the project for changing this does not exist as it runs counter to the centralised monitoring and personalized advertising income stream of Google. Attempting to simultaneously cajole multiple large-scale device manufacturers to add a non-standard addition at breakneck hardware and OS release pace would be virtually impossible. The fact that drivers are bundled with OS releases thus making third party system upgrades extremely tedious to create for any given hardware revision is not an accident but a designed process element to better aggregate control. Therefore, while the outcome is objectively barred, corporate can still doublespeak an "open" platform. Google is evil. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  > Look harder and you will find that the base permissions model and connectivity paradigms within Android greatly frustrate this range of outcomes and the political will amongst the project for changing this does not exist as it runs counter to the centralised monitoring and personalized advertising income stream of Google. In what way? Everything you said can be built on Android right now. > Attempting to simultaneously cajole multiple large-scale device manufacturers to add a non-standard addition at breakneck hardware and OS release pace would be virtually impossible. This is not necessary to implement the idea. > The fact that drivers are bundled with OS releases thus making third party system upgrades extremely tedious to create for any given hardware revision is not an accident You don't have to use that hardware. Android supports hardware that has open drivers.