Currently, there is a coordinated push between government and corporations to pursue a shared vision of how American products should evolve and how their remote monitoring, data collection, and control might be universally achieved. This collective vision is commonly referred to as the “Internet of Things” where every product created is capable of being remotely monitored for ownership usage, routine operational and systems metrics, status and state changes, interactions with other remotely monitored or controlled devices, and more. The onboard collected data of this product is then uploaded to any other nearby controlled device and a wireless or wired connection transmits this data into vast dynamic server arrays (called “the cloud”) where the data is permienantly archived and available for future analysis by anyone who has access to the server environment and file systems.
The vision that corporations and government have, is that eventually EVERY product sold to the public, will have some form of data gathering, retention, and uploading capability. The danger to this vision should be clear…
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A thermostat in Colorado is over-ridden by government officials, where they raise or lower the temperature at the expense of the homeowner, justifying the override and lockdown because of ‘Climate Change’
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A car winding through dangerous roads in the foothills of Tennessee is hacked via wireless connection, causing its brakes to lock up and harm the occupants.
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A faulty-designed washing machine, air conditioner, pump, etc has water spill damage to an IOT-ready circuit board which shorts the breadboard and causes a completely operational and expensive device to NOT work, when it would have worked normally, even after the water damage) if it did not have the circuit board attached to it in the first place.
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A newly replaced refrigerator was installed. The old fridge had a rotary dial thermostat that held the interior temperature at a set point on the dial (+/- a few degrees). The new fridge has 5 digital buttons to set the temp. (1-5). After a month, the digital thermostat malfunctions, resets setting #2 to #5 for an unknown reason, freezing and killing costly dormant seeds stored for next planting season.
The added costs of attaching an “digital layer” to everything once made to operate non-digitally, with manual controls, are passed on to the consumer, while the choices offered to consumers, of non-chipped or non-wireless product versions are being phased out. In essence, the market appears being forced into a particular direction for a particular reason, distorting the normal open and free market model that we have always relied on. Thus, we need to get to the bottom of who is applying this force, why they are doing it, and if it needs to be stopped so that the free market can once again operate normally. The assumption is that current supply and demand are driving all consumer devices to be both digitally controlled and wirelessly connected to the internet; however, there is little evidence to definitely come to this conclusion. This study would conclusively determine what forces are at work behind the digitization and wireless inclusions into current products.
Today, the American People have massive problems with products that fail entirely simply because a small circuit board (which was not on the product prior to that version release) suddenly became faulty. The impacts are so bad, that even car and airplane mechanical controls fail to operate because something happened at this fundamentally needless “digital layer”.
This is a proposal to fund a non-governmental publicly-funded study to determine if current commonly-used products on the market have a large enough customer base to warrant the production of non-chipped, non-digital, and/or inexpensive mechanical controls. The findings of this study would form the basis for persuading American-based corporations to conform their products to the current marketplace – not a future desired marketplace of their own choosing. If there is sufficient demand across the board for less expensive non-digital products that cannot communicate with outside data collection systems, then corporations might need to explain why they are refusing to conform to their markets, possibly exposing government/external collusion, monopoly control, or outside interventions surrounding future unrevealed products and systems that may be distorting current American Markets for future gain.
Our American economy is as sacred to us as our political system. Neither should be artifically influenced in order to gain poltical control or competive advantage, at the expense of the American People.