A smart refrigerator can stop keeping food cold simply because a remote software company on the other side of the planet went out of business.
Modern appliances no longer function as isolated machines, but as nodes in a massive, invisible IT ecosystem. Your fridge relies on specific software libraries and external servers to manage basic operations like temperature regulation. If those servers disappear or the software isn't updated, the physical hardware becomes useless. We used to buy appliances that lasted until a mechanical part broke down. Now, the lifespan of your kitchen is tied to the survival of a tech startup's cloud budget.
Long-Term Risks of IoT Devices: The Case of the Smart Fridge
arXiv · 2605.04787
Replacing conventional devices with smart ones has many advantages, e.g., a seamless integration of physical objects into the users digital environment or improved modes of use. However, if a conventional device is replaced by a smart device, its IT components can cause risks, that shorten the life of the device. Such risks stem from different life cycles of embedded soft- and hardware, libraries and protocols used, and the IT ecosystem required. This is problematic, because many conventional ho