It has been clear for some time hacking is not considered a consumer’s occupation. Texas Instruments demands you fill out a form almost clearly stating you are not a terrorist before you are given the resources to work with their microcontrollers. These devices are everywhere, very versatile and allow anyone to build automated sensing systems they may think of. The are now fueling a creative and empowering wave making people aware they can do things themselves on a par with Siemens, Sony, etc.
But this is all very ‘uneconomical’ and ‘unsafe’. Uneconomical because it does not allow control of the economic cycle, the technology push, it trows out profitable concepts on the street for all to grab, you can make an audio player using 2 or 3 components, costing less than $5, but you can also control a factoryline with a controller and free software, spending less than $10. You van invent stuff that means you could build a new business and compete. All that is highly undesirable. Cheap stuff doesn’t generate margins in the financial sector, it doesn’t secure the jobs there. It erodes the monopolies.
So Greencheck expects hacking to be demonized before long. Terrorists use microcontrollers. It is only a function of the way our economy prefers centalized control of any valuable asset. The West we have patent laws and ACTA to increasingly restrict our actions.
In Nigeria and Malaysia they are now going to restrict the activities of techies. Computer nerds will have to be legally approved/certified to work or face penalties.
"The gist of it is this: the plan is to create a Board of Computing Professionals and make it mandatory by law for all computing professionals to be registered with and certified by said board." (source)
"In other words, if I don’t register, it is technically illegal for me to even email ANY MALAYSIAN with even an IDEA for a tech-related project. It would be against the law for me to even sketch, on a napkin, my idea for a new app while having coffee with someone." (source)
Can you feel how this can work exactly the same for any technical innovation? What if the app uses a little web enabled device to report sensor data. Only certified hackers allowed!