Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

queuing outside these buildings become their most attentive and
demanding audience. These consumers want the objects they love
to be the best they possibly can be, and if manufactures refuse to
listen then they will take matters into their own hands. Unhappy
with Apple’s limited ecology, an estimated six million users have
‘jailbroken’ their iPhones. 27
• State regulation: While manufacturers have been highly successful
in lobbying state regulatory bodies, community voices are growing
in strength. The Free Software Foundation (FSF), Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF), Creative Commons movement and many other
NGOs are making themselves heard and affecting policy decisions. 28
• Control through design: As manufacturers lock down and seal up
their technology, hackers and modders take up the challenge and
find ways around the restricted environment. When the Apple iPod
docking connector proved difficult for hobbyists to get hold of,
members of the iPodLinux forum initiated a ‘group buy’, purchasing
a large batch of these connectors and on-selling them to the
modding community. 29
• Control of information: Deprived of detailed product information,
customers will make their own. They will ask and answer not
only the frequently asked questions, but also the infrequent, the
obscure, and the outright strange and stupid questions. 30 They will
track down every technical detail, every chip, every material, every
manufacturing technique, every supplier, every workplace – right
down to the level of a single screw and a single worker. 31
6.15 Conclusion
While interpretative flexibility is present in all objects, it is the
consumers’ ability to speak publicly about the objects they consume
that challenges manufacturers’ prescribed modes of consumption. As
online consumer accounts continue to accumulate, the heterogeneity
of object use will become increasingly apparent. It is arguable that
consumer activity has never been so visible or interconnected; the
public nature of this discursive space positions the object as a meeting
place, a shared, negotiated space that enables individual and communal
meaning structures to be formed. The more access and control
the consumer has over this space, the greater their ability to construct
meaningful relations within practices of consumption.
Stategies of Control and Tactics of Use
29/ See Chlazza’s account of the
group buy in his iPod Ultradock
project, http://www.chlazza.net/ultra-
dock.html accessed 27 February 2011.
30/ See for example the YouTube
channel Is it a good idea to micro-
wave this?, http://www.youtube.
com/show/isitagoodideatomicrowavet
his?s=7 accessed 24 February 2011.
31/ Sterling claims that within 30
years all significant objects in our
lives will be subject to this level of
scrutiny (2005). We are not there
yet, however consider the following:
third-party parts supplier ifixit take
apart the Apple iPhone 4 on the day
of its release and provide detailed
documentation of the disassembly
process and components, http://
www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone-4-
Teardown/3130/1 accessed 24 Febru-
ary 2011; Apple changes the screws
it’s using on the iPhone 4 and gets
wide coverage in online forums and
hobbyist news sites, http://www.tom-
shardware.com/news/ifixit-phillips-
pentalobe-pentalobular-screw,12038.
html accessed 24 February 2011; in
August 2008 an iPhone user in Britain
found pictures of an assembly line
worker on a newly purchased iPhone
3G. These pictures were posted to
the online MacRumors forum, spark-
ing a global effort to find the identity
of the worker. The story was later
picked up by numerous mainstream
media sites (Hutcheon, 2008).
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