I have kept my car for thirteen years, my fridge for ten, my central heating system is fifteen years old and in my second home I have a perfectly good cooker and oven from the 1980s.
However, Sonos this week told me that my four year old speakers are obsolete, and my Nest devices of a similar age are barely supported.
This is the problem with IOT - it operates on the timescale of computers, which have a lifecycle of three to five years, not ten to twenty five years of traditional appliances.
Not only is this expensive, but it is hugely wasteful and not very green.
As a result I have decided that I will no longer buy any IOT devices unless they are capable of operating without the internet.
It is not only this aspect of the internet that is very bad for the environment - Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of power for its stupid, useless, unproductive ‘mining’ operations, whilst streaming video uses many tens of thousands times more power than traditional broadcasting.
Of course, the internet also preserves energy - many meetings can happen online that would have demanded travel and the use of paper and printing has reduced tremendously.
The real problem is that internet business models have been developed not only with disregard for morality, financial and social models, but also for the environment. It is time for reflection and regulation.