If there’s one thing which probably unites all of Hackaday’s community, it’s a love of technology. We live to hear about the very latest developments before anyone else, and the chances are for a lot of them we’ll all have a pretty good idea how they work. But if there’s something which probably annoys a lot of us the most, it’s when we see a piece of new technology misused. A lot of us are open-source enthusiasts not because we’re averse to commercial profit, but because we’ve seen the effects of monopolistic practices distorting the market with their new technologies and making matters worse, not better. After all, if a new technology isn’t capable of making the world a better place in some way, what use is it?

It’s depressing then to watch the same cycle repeat itself over and over, to see new technologies used in the service of restrictive practices for short-term gain rather than to make better products. We probably all have examples of new high-tech products that are simply bad, that are new technology simply for the sake of marketing, and which ultimately deliver something worse than what came before, but with more bling. Perhaps the worst part is the powerlessness,  watching gullible members of the public lapping up something shiny and new that you know to be flawed, and not being able to do anything about it.

Here at Hackaday though, perhaps there is something I can do about it. I don’t sit in any boardroom that matters but I do have here a soapbox on which to stand, and from it I can talk to you, people whose work takes you into many fascinating corners of the tech industry and elsewhere. If I think that new technologies are being used irresponsibly to create bad products, at least I can codify how that might be changed. So here are my four Rules For The Responsible Use Of New Technology, each with some examples. They should each be self-evident, and I hope you’ll agree with me.

New technology should not be used to shorten the lifespan of a product
We’re looking at you, Apple AirPods. Maurizio Pesce, CC BY 2.0

We now know that everything we do carries a penalty in terms of the environmental impact of its manufacture. Thus as a society we are now much more aware of the CO2 generated in manufacture of the things we use, and of what happens to them after we are done with them. We expect the things we use to minimise that impact as well as deliver us value for money, but instead we so often find that the use of new technologies are being used to shorten the lifetime of the things we buy in order to increase the sales of new products.

There are plenty of examples of this to be found, for example in the past we’ve written about technology becoming the new rust in the automotive business, but perhaps when looking for a poster child we find it in the lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery. What should be an innovation which provides the product with a long life and great performance is all too often designed instead to give it a life of only a few years before it must be discarded for a new one. It’s normal for lithium-ion batteries to be sealed for life inside a product with no way for a consumer to replace them, resulting in what should be perfectly good products becoming junk well before their time. No new technology should be used as an excuse to intentionally shorten the lifespan of a product.

New technology should not be used as an excuse to inhibit repairability

Manufacturers often dislike people repairing their products when they break, either because they would prefer to sell a new product, or because they want to restrict repairs to their own ecosystem of repair agents. The tractor manufacturer John Deere is notorious for their use of digital registration of all new parts before a tractor will recognise them, but there’s a more insidious trend which you’ll probably recognise if you own an Apple device. The cult of no user repairable parts inside has moved from merely a meaningless phrase on the back of your 1970s TV set to the designed-in unreparability of glued-together consumer electronics, alongside a systematic removal of low-tech alternatives. We’ve railed about the motor industry doing this on a grand scale here at Hackaday in the past, overusing automotive electronics to make what should be a 25-year vehicle into a 10-year one as the second or third owner balks at the excessive cost of a replacement do-everything module.

Perhaps the saddest part of this erosion of repairability is that the consumers who are its victims simply don’t care, so mesmerised are they by the superficially pretty toys with which the manufacturers coat their next big thing.

New technology should not be tied to unnecessary services
There is no need for my washing machine to be connected to the internet.

My washing machine is a fine appliance, it does my laundry without complaint, and given a bit of extra time it will also dry it, too. It’s functionally similar to the one my family had in the 1970s, except it uses less energy and the mechanical sequencer with a big clicky knob had been replaced by a smart computerised interface.

It also has an app, through which if I installed it I could see if my washing is done, and set it going from the comfort of my sofa. To activate the app I must connect it to my network and sign up for an account with the manufacturer… for what? In fact a stand-alone appliance has become a means to gather usage data. Today I can use it standalone, but perhaps tomorrow its successor will require the app.

My washing machine is simply a small example, as everything from a lightbulb to a car now requires an internet connection so my usage data can be sold or I can be targeted with advertising. I simply want my appliances or other devices to do their job, if all the new technology does is enable a data slurp then you are doing new technology wrong.

This of course becomes much more insidious when the device won’t work without the online connection, because then it becomes junk when the online service ends. A few years ago I reviewed the Nabaztag, an early internet appliance that went silent when the company behind it folded, and while it was one of the first bricked appliances there have been many more. Far worse are companies who intentionally brick otherwise perfectly good devices to sell new ones, while it’s one thing for an older phone to simply become outdated it’s another entirely for Sonos to intentionally disable their older products.

New technology should not be detrimental to the planet

It’s safe to say that over the coming century one of the greatest challenges every to hit humanity will unfold further, as we will have to manage the effects of climate change. We’re living now with the after-effects of technology from decades ago, and our kids and older selves will in turn live with the effects of the technology we have now. It’s no longer the preserve of wild-eyed environmentalists to talk about the dangers of harmful practices, it should be front-and-centre for every engineer as they design something, what its environmental impact will be.

Unfortunately this is in conflict with the commercial motivation to sell more products, thus we all too frequently see new technologies with less concern for environmental impact than they should have. In a way this paragraph has the most overlap with all the previous ones because they all point towards things which extend the life of a product, but it goes beyond that into the world of software. Two of the biggest hype centres of the last few years have been cryptocurrencies and generative AI, both of which are certainly interesting, but should they come at the expense of using more power than Argentina? If your new technology wastes energy on an industrial scale, yet again you are doing it wrong.

So there you have it, apply these rules to anything you design, and use them to inform your purchasing choices. Demand better use of technology, and say no to exploitative garbage!