I'd had to be like lending a book or renting e-scooters; otherwise it'd turn into a huge e-waste issue. This makes me think of Star Trek's PADD - i.e. an iPad

I'd had to be like lending a book or renting e-scooters; otherwise it'd turn into a huge e-waste issue. This makes me think of Star Trek's PADD - i.e. an iPad imagined some 20 years before the first one was built. Unlike real iPads, PADDs were used more like pieces of paper or individual books - people would exchange them, they'd submit reports to their commanders by leaving a PADD on their desk; one could easily have half a dozen of those PADDs spread around when researching something, etc. There's a lot of merit to that idea - 15 years since iPad came out, it's becoming clear that a single expensive screen for everything is not a way to go, at least not for productive work. But I feel that, beyond dirt-cheap hardware, it requires a closed organizational ecosystem. On the show, it's plausible. A starship is like an office building (except people don't live it for months at a time); PADDs can circulate freely around it, going from person to person, changing purposes along the way. Some get lost or broken and need replacement, but it's a neat, closed system of same-ish hardware in constant flow. But try to do that as a regular consumer product/service in the real world, and it stops making as much sense. It's a problem similar to various tool sharing initiatives - they technically exist, but they aren't really "a thing". People prefer to own stuff to ensure it's available and in working condition.