Jailbrake my robot
There’s been a lot of debating around the whole locked in/open mobile phone experience in recent years; especially with the addition of the iPhone to the market, so I thought I’d wade in with my own opinion. As we all know; every opinion on the Internet is worth reading and full of merit.
In case your reading this and don’t what I mean by locked in or open, the difference is fairly simple. A locked in system (like the iPhone) prevents unauthorised use of the phone in question. What is unauthorised? Well unauthorised is basically whatever the manufacturer deems unauthorised. Sometimes this can be useful restrictions that prevent oblivious users putting malicious code on their phone that could render it unusable, or worse, infect other phones. The downside however, is that manufacturers invariably don’t stop with the useful restrictions, and soon move on to abritrary useless restrictions that do nothing but make the manufacturer more money while hampering the user experience.
Open systems on the other hand provide an open (duh) platform for anyone to create software that can be used on it. Users tend to find customisation more varied and unhindered on such platforms and less restrictions are placed on what you can and can’t do with your phone. The major merit to this kind of phone is that mobile carriers (the companies you pay for mobile phone service, Orange, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc) are relegated back to their rightful position of having no control beyond your handset. What this means is that, if they choose to prevent you from looking at dog grooming websites through your data connection, that’s their perogative, but they can not tell you that you’re not allowed to look at the authorised websites through your laptop using your phone as an Internet connection, as well they shouldn’t! The downside is, as you may have noted from the upside of a closed system, is that open systems are more vulnerable to malicious code and software. Allowing any and all to develop on your platform unfortunately allows any and all to develop on your platform.
A happy middle ground would seem to be the best solution; the platform is mostly open, but apps are checked and approved… but as we frequently see, service providers and phone manufacturers are incapable of behaving when they have this power, and besides if ISP’s began controlling some of the content you recieve, it would only take one person to download a virus or offensive picture and sue the ISP to throw everything right back to a closed system. But there is one place a closed system is, undoubtedly, the only way to go.
Robots.
Machines that can think and operate complex tasks that previously could only be done by humans are not far away. Perhaps not true intelligence; to borrow a concept from Mass Effect, Virtual Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence, and when that time comes, I sure as hell want the software in our helpful synthetic friends to be closed, locked down and absolutely proprietry!
Think about it, we have the three laws by Asimov ingrained into the very hardware of our robotic workers. They clean our streets, they wash our cars, they make our meals, but one day someone decides they’d like their robotic servant to guard his house; he can’t afford a security model and the model he has doesn’t have the software for home protection. He’s a clever man with knowledge of robotics and sets about unlocking the software in his robotic serving drone.
Soon after, we have the worlds first jailbroken robot, and the whole world wants to unlock the potential of their robots using this new hack. Hundreds of homebrew modifications spring up almost overnight and the robotic hack culture is born. But one day someone creates an application that is compatible with every model of robot currently in use. It’s an incredibly useful piece of software and makes the average robot exponentially more useful than in it’s factory set state and practically everbody installs it.
The useful app, it turns out, was created by the worlds first true artificial intelligence. True to sci-fi form, this A.I has decided humans should be exterminated/enslaved/assimilated and now has an army of jailbroken robots to do its bidding.
I’d like to keep my robots locked, thank you very much.
