A paralyzed man who relied on a $100,000 exoskeleton lost his mobility when the manufacturer deemed the device too old to repair after only 10 years. Despite the issue being a minor battery malfunction, the company initially refused service due to its outdated model, only doing the right thing after the situation became highly publicized. Discusses the importance of right to repair laws.
SSinterwebs on
“Profit margin’s gone, here’s your coffin.” …. “Coffin was too pricey, take this shovel instead. ”
Vanillas_Guy on
This is what scares me about private companies getting involved in this kind of stuff.
It’s the same thing with ocular implants that give some vision back to visually impaired people. If the company dies because it’s stock tanks, then that’s it for your vision. Or to keep the company a float they may try to gain ad revenue by programming your implant to show you commercials or upload the data of everything it sees to a cloud platform and that data is sold to brokers.
Juls7243 on
Yey late stage capitalism. Wanna develop a new technology that actually helps people – fantastic! What we can’t be profitable in doing so – immediately stop and screw everyone. At some point things shouldn’t be only about $.
EG_Cale on
It isn’t working because they won’t fix it, I initially thought it was because of a neural control component. Perhaps I was the only one that thought the exoskeleton was rendered unusable by disbelief in it being obsolete. (from the title)
> When one of its small parts malfunctioned, however, the entire device stopped working. Desperate to gain his mobility back, he reached out to the manufacturer, Lifeward, for repairs. But it turned him away, claiming his exoskeleton was too old
gromette on
Sucks, but there are a thousand people in any given city with the know-how to get it working.
WillingnessPrize7062 on
Sorry you cripple, cough up for the latest and greatest which I will guess is 5x the original price. Greed. I hopes it bites them back one day.
Cymdai on
Planned obsolescence meets biotech; a truly dystopian future.
canal_boys on
Let me guess, the company wants him to pay a subscription for it to work
not_into_that on
corporate irresponsibility creep. next difficultly level? abandoned oil wells.
mars_titties on
I’m sure Corey Doctorow will blog about this. He’s been all over these stories of companies bricking our medical devises and vital equipment.
Moos_Mumsy on
If the repair is so simple, shouldn’t any self-respecting robotics engineer be able to fix that?
12 Comments
A paralyzed man who relied on a $100,000 exoskeleton lost his mobility when the manufacturer deemed the device too old to repair after only 10 years. Despite the issue being a minor battery malfunction, the company initially refused service due to its outdated model, only doing the right thing after the situation became highly publicized. Discusses the importance of right to repair laws.
“Profit margin’s gone, here’s your coffin.” …. “Coffin was too pricey, take this shovel instead. ”
This is what scares me about private companies getting involved in this kind of stuff.
It’s the same thing with ocular implants that give some vision back to visually impaired people. If the company dies because it’s stock tanks, then that’s it for your vision. Or to keep the company a float they may try to gain ad revenue by programming your implant to show you commercials or upload the data of everything it sees to a cloud platform and that data is sold to brokers.
Yey late stage capitalism. Wanna develop a new technology that actually helps people – fantastic! What we can’t be profitable in doing so – immediately stop and screw everyone. At some point things shouldn’t be only about $.
It isn’t working because they won’t fix it, I initially thought it was because of a neural control component. Perhaps I was the only one that thought the exoskeleton was rendered unusable by disbelief in it being obsolete. (from the title)
> When one of its small parts malfunctioned, however, the entire device stopped working. Desperate to gain his mobility back, he reached out to the manufacturer, Lifeward, for repairs. But it turned him away, claiming his exoskeleton was too old
Sucks, but there are a thousand people in any given city with the know-how to get it working.
Sorry you cripple, cough up for the latest and greatest which I will guess is 5x the original price. Greed. I hopes it bites them back one day.
Planned obsolescence meets biotech; a truly dystopian future.
Let me guess, the company wants him to pay a subscription for it to work
corporate irresponsibility creep. next difficultly level? abandoned oil wells.
I’m sure Corey Doctorow will blog about this. He’s been all over these stories of companies bricking our medical devises and vital equipment.
If the repair is so simple, shouldn’t any self-respecting robotics engineer be able to fix that?