dongle_scrapyard_07
A load of dongles (with parallel cables and backplates) found dumped in a skip outside Kimberley Hall at Brunel University, Runnymede, in March 2006.
From vague memory of which computers in there had what software, I guess these were either for Alias/StudioTools (PC) or a Solaris version of AutoCAD, but I might be wrong. Did Sun SPARC workstations have this type of backplate?
So: here is thousands of pounds' worth of 'technology', originally designed expressly to enforce a business model, which I suppose it did fairly well, for a while. Those thousands of pounds (how much were educational licences for this software) came from the taxpayer, and my tuition fees, and I suppose were amortised over a few thousand students.
But now, the technology is worthless. Entirely useless. Its function is not needed outside of the narrow context in which it was designed to operate.
How much design effort goes into creating products which are intended purely to enforce business models or political ideologies on their users: architectures of control?
More examples, discussion and analysis:
dongle_scrapyard_07
A load of dongles (with parallel cables and backplates) found dumped in a skip outside Kimberley Hall at Brunel University, Runnymede, in March 2006.
From vague memory of which computers in there had what software, I guess these were either for Alias/StudioTools (PC) or a Solaris version of AutoCAD, but I might be wrong. Did Sun SPARC workstations have this type of backplate?
So: here is thousands of pounds' worth of 'technology', originally designed expressly to enforce a business model, which I suppose it did fairly well, for a while. Those thousands of pounds (how much were educational licences for this software) came from the taxpayer, and my tuition fees, and I suppose were amortised over a few thousand students.
But now, the technology is worthless. Entirely useless. Its function is not needed outside of the narrow context in which it was designed to operate.
How much design effort goes into creating products which are intended purely to enforce business models or political ideologies on their users: architectures of control?
More examples, discussion and analysis: