> At this point I'm convinced that there's something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology.

The problem isnt with technology. The problem is with physical ownership versus copyright/trademark/patent ownership in abeyance of physical ownership.

I go to a store and buy a device. I have a receipt showing a legal and good sale. This device isnt mine, even if a receipt says so.

The software (and now theres ALWAYS software) isnt mine and can never be mine. My ownership is degraded because a company can claim that I didn't buy a copy of software, or that its only licensed, or they retain control remotely.

And the situation is even worse if the company claims its a "digital restriction", ala DMCA. Then even my 1st amendment speech rights are abrogated AND my ownership rights are ignored.

It would not be hard to right this sinking ship.

     1. Abolish DMCA.
     2. Establish that first sale doctrine is priority above copyright/patent/trademark
     3. Tax these 'virtual property rights'
     4. Have FTC find any remote control of sold goods be considered as fraudulently classified indefinite rental (want to rent? State it as such)

If you think about it for as long as I did, you will find that the moment everything went sideways is when general-purpose computing devices started having their initial bootloader in the mask ROM of the CPU/SoC. Outlaw just that, say, by requiring the first instruction the CPU executes to physically reside in a separate ROM/flash chip, and suddenly, everything is super hackable. But DMCA abolition would certainly be very helpful as well.