Unbricking Our Bodies: A Right to Move

Thank you, Cory Doctorow, for popularizing the term “enshitification“ to describe the declining quality and performance of the digital platforms we’ve come to depend on. He describes this development as a new form of enclosing of the commons with digital hedgerows. Back in the day, feudal lords used hedgerows to enclose fields and pastures so they could start charging rents and tributes for what used to be the commonwealth.

Now we have digital feudal lords raising the rents to exorbitant prices while at the same time lowering the quality and reliability of what we receive for those rents. Cory points out that the old adage was that if the app or service was free then you, the user, and the data hoovered up was the product. But now the platforms are even treating the folks buying that data in the same exploitative manner.

Our big tech oligarchs have even devised strategies in their digital realms to counter our efforts to gain some modicum of independence from the rentiers. It’s such a mainstream practice now that even it has a term, “Bricking”.  This isn’t just for apps or your Ring security system. The venerable John Deere has bricked its combines and tractors when farmers simply do what they’ve always done, save money by doing their own repairs. This bricking, or as Jay Freeman calls it, this “felony contempt of business model”, is a cynical effort to manufacture scarcity rather than create value.

What if you had to get permission to heal your body? Oh darn, that’s already the case. Insurance companies have figured out how to brick our bodies out of healthcare. I forgot about denial of service. At Ikaria Design, we are producing products that help you unbrick your connective tissue from years of sedentary workstyles. We will never require your chair to be reupholstered by us, refurbished by us, or require you to seek permission from us if you want to try a new position or switch to another way of sitting. We are awed by our bodies' capacities to heal and have designed our products to support that process, not undermine it. The right to repair is built into our products because it’s already built into the miraculous systems of life on this planet.

We can’t imagine the sense of scarcity these companies live in. What is going through their heads as they’re thinking that they need to brick in their customers in order to maintain revenue streams? That reveals that they have long since de-prioritized product development, innovation, or even customer service, and are going whole hog into bean-counting and “shareholder value” as their primary purpose. They are just as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the old feudal lords. And we know how that story ends. What can we do to help you cut down the hedgerows boxing in your mobility?