[jerf]

One could argue that eventually the market will settle on peripherals interconnected by something that could be open. I don't need a "smart hearing aid" with cloud connectivity... I need a quality hearing aid whose sole job is to take a secured audio stream and play it with as much quality as it can muster. I can carry the processing unit in my pocket and drive it with anything I want. I don't need "smart glasses" with integrated cloud this and proprietary that... I need glasses that take a secured stream of video data and display them with all their might. I don't need an integrated... etc etc. There's no reason the machine in my pocket driving them can't be open.

This is, of course, not what will happen at first. It will take time for the "race to the bottom" to produce this result.

I'll say this though. I don't consider myself terribly ideological on this point, but in practice I probably am. I am not turning over my hearing and my vision to a company, or indeed any organization. If it's not open, I'll play the luddite. It's not worth it.