I know, I know — you didn't know it was broken. Neither did I, until I tried to switch cellphone providers earlier this year. Or when I wanted to watch a downloaded video on my new HDTV. Or tried to skip songs on my iPhone without looking at it. Or when I tried to give some of my iTunes downloads to my girlfriend.

There's no reason I shouldn't be able to do any of these things, and do them easily. As the Six Million Dollar Man's boss said, "We have the technology." The barriers are due to shortsighted or wrongheaded thinking about tech. Those barriers need to be called out, and that's where we come in.

DVICE — this site you're reading right now, what SCI FI Tech has proudly expanded into — is all about technology. As the tagline over on the left there says, we're obsessed with it. And like the name implies, we spend a lot of time talking about devices: gadgets, machines, and fun gizmos. Given their abilities, promises, and often-slick design, it's easy to fall in love with them. But we must always remember that these tech toys are just a means to an end.

In fact, that end is in our name, too. See that deliciously designed upside-down "i"? It stands for information (well, it does to me). Information is what we all want, and not just answers to questions like, "How many euros are in a dollar right this second?" or, "Did Britney go out with underwear today?"

Information means data. It can be screenplays, photos of bunnies, the soundtrack to Smallville, that e-mail I wrote my brother two years ago, that cool teaser for Cloverfield… you get the idea. Assuming I have decent bandwidth, I should be able to get all this stuff anytime, anywhere — virtually instantaneously. And to an extent, I can. But the list of gremlins in the system that are curtailing my access is long: poor design, incompatibility, Digital Rights Management, two-year service contracts, and more.

We can kill some of these demons right now. Here are four quick repairs for our sputtering digital society:
1) Revamp the cellphone and cable systems in North America: Everyone should be able to pick cellphone and cable providers at will. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg recently made a very strong case for junking the current phone system, which, among other things, prevents a phone book of mobile numbers from being published. From two-year contracts to never-free ringtones to being forced to pay when people call you, this system is clearly the product of corporations that want to squeeze every last cent out of consumers. I'm no Marxist — I'd be totally OK with that if it didn't prevent innovative phones, like Nokia's Prism, and technologies, like mobile videoconferencing and portable digital TV, from ever getting a foothold in America.

The cable system is just as bad. I, like many Americans, have only one really crappy cable provider to choose from, and my apartment doesn't have the southern view required for satellite. My provider is so bad that I'm convinced if it had to compete with others, it would be out of business overnight. The barriers that prevent open competition among cable companies are stifling innovation and, quite frankly, un-American. Sure, there are major issues (like who actually owns the cable, for instance), but let's deal with them and move on so everyone in Brooklyn can watch Torchwood on BBC America. The power company here, ConEd, used to have an effective monopoly on providing electricity but was forced to allow users to buy it from other sources; cable could, and should, work the same way.

2) Dial back copy protection: Notice I didn't say do away with it. I work in an information-based industry — I don't think copying all my stories should be allowed willy-nilly. But excessive copy protection at best unfairly limits consumer choice (like the iTunes example I mentioned at the beginning) and at worst destroys entire formats (anyone remember SACD and DVD-Audio?).

Luckily, DRM is getting less popular, with big companies like Apple and Amazon openly eschewing it. Unfortunately, content providers like the music industry stupidly make big deals of using their legal machine against regular people, like that mom from Minnesota, instead of the mass pirates that should be shut down. They need to stop being babies and respect fair use.

3) Make technology more organic: And I don't mean like those aliens in The Abyss. I mean that gadgets should better emulate their "analog" counterparts. We are analog beings, we live in an analog world — the interface should be tailored to match, no matter how fancy the digital technology under the hood.

Like I mentioned earlier, the iPhone is a tasty gadget, but that sleek touchscreen isn't as good as a button when you want to skip music tracks while running. That doesn't necessarily mean we have to go back to buttons — technologies like VibeTonz, which gives slight vibrational feedback when you touch a screen, would help a lot. OLED technology, which can produce flexible screens, has a lot of potential to change gadgets as we know them. And Amazon's Kindle e-reader appears to be a step in this direction as well, since the interface is said to "melt away" so you don't think about the device you're holding, just like a real book. Such should be the way with all technology.

4. Every device that could use a wireless connection should have one: The Kindle is important for another reason — the always-on EV-DO connection to the Internet, which you don't have to pay a monthly fee to get. The wireless tech opens up a huge number of possibilities, including downloading, browsing, streaming and upgrading, all quickly and easily. We have a ways to go before wireless technology is totally seamless (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth both have password security that could be less kludgey), and there are issues with battery power for portables, but the ability to stream wirelessly from your iPod to your TV or stereo shouldn't just be possible — it should be so easy that your grandma can do it.

These "repairs" have two recurring themes: making technology more flexible, and making its use seamless. The iPhone is one of the most successful devices of all time because it gives you more choices (like portable YouTube) and is so damn easy to use (just touch the YouTube icon). But it would go from a breakthrough gadget to a revolutionary one if it had features like vibrational feedback and owners could pick the wireless provider they want.

Fortunately, the iPhone's popularity has resulted it being taken apart and hacked, and the users have taken over. Now that people know it's possible to hack an iPhone to work on T-Mobile, they're starting to question why they were locked into AT&T in the first place, and I don't think Verizon's recent announcement of moving toward an more open system is a coincidence. As it turns out, the people's voice really does matter. Go ahead and shout it here on DVICE. You might change the world.