Cyborg researcher Steve Mann has produced a piece of conceptual art called "License to seat." It's a chair with "magnetic stripe card reader and spikes that retract when a seating license is downloaded from a license server in response to input from the card reader incoroprated into the chair. The license server is in the 19 inch relay rack behind the Internet Chair" The piece makes a point about the rentware world we're fast approaching, where individuals are stuck in a kind of feudal relationship with commercial entities, who reach into our homes and track and bill us for the use of our household goods.
(Thanks, Ethan!)
