Keali-Manifesto

The excerpt from “The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things” read to me as… overly complicated and perhaps oddly unnecessary to me–as did the “Critical Engineering Manifesto”, but the latter delved into a depth of societal introspection that I merely could not grasp nor conjure enough interest. What I absorbed from the former, at least, was the hypothetical scenario of a consumer attempting to merge the utility of two seemingly unrelated products; oftentimes this assumes the objects to be of different technological time periods, which implies the desire to technologically advance the more mundane, archaic device of the two. I personally relate to the individuals who do not see the practical point in this mindset: with modern day technology naturally being comparatively impressive to the past, and constantly advancing to encompass more opportunities, there is constantly the rise of arbitrary explorations in how to make sometimes the most unnecessary things “more technologically advanced”. This can be the result of different factors, from pure curiosity to inherent human laziness. Though this “struggle of the internet of things” has potential to pave ways to new, useful, innovative inventions that are practical and reasonable, people believe, and I can sympathize, that plenty results are probably made purely “just because”, and with no real usable value. I have not dealt with this concept much at all, but perhaps a reflexive example I can come up with is the new Apple updates recently, for both the newest iPhone and Macbooks, both of which ignited anger and frustration in all my tech-savvy friends (much to my personal apathy as a non-Apple fanatic); from what I’ve heard, it feels like Apple has just been “upgrading” (debatable, haha), its specs of its newer products just for the sake of implementing some change, not really thinking about the practicality in actual use and potential feedback of its loyal customers. Although this isn’t combining two objects, this was the closest example I could probably relate to as someone who has never thought about, and is confirmed to be thoroughly uninterested, in this “struggle of the internet of things”.