Manifesto of thingness

Hello, reader!

The topic I want to raise looks so strange, so I was at a loss in which hubs to take it to. I'll start with the question: what is the difference between a stool and a smartphone? In difficulty? No, not about that. Let us put the question a little differently: what is the difference between your own hand as a tool and a car? .. I want to single out some property of objects, programs or, more generally, products that characterize how a thing serves its owner. After that, we will discuss whether this property is useful, that is, whether it improves consumer characteristics, and in what cases. And if we decide that there is a benefit, then we will think about how to make more things possess this property.

Definitions

We begin, as usual, with the definitions. By product, we mean a material object, a program, a software and hardware complex ... That is, in order to increase the generality of reasoning, we assign a very broad meaning to this word. The property of the product we are talking about here is temporarily called a real thing, simply because so far nothing better has been invented. We will say that a product has a real thing, if it was made for the sole purpose of serving its user and (subject to technical limitations) to fulfill it and only his will.

In the framework of vacuum spherology, a thingness is a usual predicate (either it exists or it does not exist), but in the real world, of course, one has to put up with the fact that a thingness is not a qualitative, but a quantitative characteristic. Immediately, we fix the constraints that impede the attainment of the ideal thingness, in order to be able to abstract away from them and move on.

• If we look at product characteristics such as functionality, then we note that there are errors that lead to a violation of functionality, but the manufacturer, as a rule, strives to reduce the number of defects (although there are some cases ). Similarly, for thingness - sometimes "things" refuse to serve, break, buggy. What can I say, even the human body is not completely subordinate to its owner and can sometimes betray him. But still, we are used to the fact that arms and legs are more or less obeyed, the stool stands quietly and does not seek to give a kick in the ass, and the player plays exactly the chosen song. It is important to distinguish when products are refused due to natural causes, and when they do it out of harm.
• Among all that we use, it is sometimes difficult to select specific products, it is difficult to separate the thing from the service associated with it. For example, the Linux operating system wants to be called a real product, but in reality every distribution kit is not a thing in itself, but a whole complex of processes related to updating and developing. However, in any practical activity one has to deal with vague notions.

Thingness is good

At this point, I hope that at the level of concepts we have some kind of consensus, and now it’s time to explain why these concepts were needed at all. My first thesis is that property is a user-friendly property, and we must strive to ensure that the products that surround us and that we use have this property if there are no obvious contraindications. Of course, many products cannot or should not have the property of materiality due to technical, economic or ethical restrictions. First of all, there are product-systems that serve many users at once, such as the underground or city sewage systems. But among single-user products there may be exceptions. For example, I am not sure that I would like a private car to take into account only the interests of its owner. But I am convinced that the smartphone and the personal computer are those products that can and in a certain sense should possess a thingness. At least, the design of the equipment, the operating system and the main part of the programs installed on them. With the development of medical technology will appear more and more devices, which by design are actually an extension of the body. And all these implants and prostheses should serve exclusively to their owner. If you agree, then welcome to our club.

Why is everything bad

The main problem on the way to materiality is a permanent conflict of interests between the producer and the consumer. For simple items, everything is simple - the manufacturer receives a one-time fee for the product, and no longer cares about its future fate, and then, if the thingness is demanded by consumers, the invisible hand of the market plays, and everything will be fine. But if the product is a bit more complicated, it acquires additional services, so that more complex relationships are built up between the producer and the consumer, and here comes the very conflict of interests - the manufacturer does not want to just lose a piece of power over their products. Typical examples of this behavior are: many applications on the phone live their own lives, merge user data onto their servers; social network shows the user is not what he would like to see, and again sells his data. However, this is just an example of a real thing, it's just that these products are considered not so user’s sovereign.

Manifesto

My second thesis is much weaker than the first is the assumption that the naive mechanism described below can increase the level of materiality for at least some classes of products.

This is primarily about software, but the principle applies to material objects as well. Here is the basic idea - the developer simply declares that his product has the property of materiality, in the hope that this fact will increase the attractiveness of the product in the eyes of users, or simply because the developer considers the materiality useful. Then (potential) users and co-developers could identify the deviation of the actual properties of the product from the declared ones. To simplify the understanding of what is happening by all participants, it is necessary to formulate the idea of ​​the thingness in the form of a manifesto with something like this:

A copy of this product during operation does not serve any direct interests other than the interests of the user. The user assumes solely all responsibility and all risks associated with the use of this product.

While it looks clumsy, you need to work on the text. Conveniently, the manifest text will be standardized so that it can be referenced ("This product does not contain mercury is real ”) or directly included in the documentation, as is done with licenses. Generally speaking, the property declaration and license are independent of each other, but it would be convenient to create a slot (or two) right inside the license, where you could indicate whether this product supports property (and if this property is viral). For example, Creative Commons has four independent elements (slots) to which a fifth one could be added. In addition, the property of things is well combined with free licenses, while for a proprietary code it is difficult to verify the integrity of the intentions of the developers.

Conclusion

The idea of ​​realness is organically combined with the values ​​declared by the Free Software Foundation, and, perhaps, is already present in some form. And to put it all out has led me to a general dissatisfaction with the services and products that I regularly use, above all this software and the devices on which it lives. But in general, there are more questions than answers here, and I encourage you to discuss this topic.