Research, Design, Product
The Wayback Machine is a prototype fictional product which allows a user to carefully control the availability of technologies and services within their home. Connected homes are becoming increasingly autonomous and can make decisions of increasing importance on our behalf, for example who to let in the front door or when to stream cctv cameras . With more and more reliance we place on programmed behaviours, AI and machine learning, how can we take back control of our own homes on our terms.
Once a technology is widely used, we rarely stop to question the way it is affecting our lives and whether this is for better or worse. The Wayback Machine has a rotary dial on the front that allows you to wind back time and turn off digital services and connections. Services and particular signals are turned off through a combination of jamming technology and filtering web addresses.
This prototype was created during the 2016 Mozilla Open IoT Design Sprint in Berlin in collaboration with Peter Bihr, Rachel Uwa and Vladen Joler. Photo credits Peter Bihr. Peter wrote a great write up on Understanding the Connected Home: Concepts / Controlling privacy]