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The reason was simple and uncomfortable: the company behind it decided to discontinue support for a range of products in Europe. The hardware itself still works, but without cloud services, updates, and technical support, there is little “smart” left.
Nothing catastrophic happened. The heating still turns on and off. But the moment stayed with me because it made something abstract very concrete. We rely on everyday devices whose core functionality depends on decisions taken far away, by companies we did not elect and cannot influence.
You buy a device. You install it. Next, you connect it to the internet. And somewhere along the way, you forget that you have also subscribed to decisions made elsewhere. A single strategic business choice can turn a perfectly functional object into something diminished.
These small experiences help explain why technological sovereignty has become a political issue. France has been debating digital independence. Also, the new Dutch government announced its intention to explore its own digital infrastructure, preferably in a European context.
What sounds like a high-level policy discussion becomes much easier to understand when something ordinary stops working at home.
There are already early examples of this approach. In education and research, some countries have invested in public or non-commercial cloud environments rather than relying exclusively on commercial hyperscalers. These systems may be less shiny, but they operate under different principles: continuity, accountability, and public governance rather than profit alone.
If you look honestly at daily digital life, the imbalance is striking. Email, documents, cloud storage, learning platforms, video meetings, and even household devices increasingly depend on a small number of multinational technology companies. Convenience has slowly turned into dependency.
My thermostat is not a geopolitical crisis. But it is a domestic example of a global pattern. Digital dependence remains abstract until it suddenly affects something very ordinary: heating, lighting, or access to your own tools.
For years, we chose efficiency, integration, and connectivity. Everything smart. Everything in the cloud. Only when something stops working do you realise how much you have outsourced.
At home, I am increasingly experimenting with open-source tools. Not because they are flawless, but because the idea that technology is neutral, stable, and guaranteed to exist in the form we expect is no longer convincing.
Sometimes, you do not need a white paper or a strategy document to understand technological sovereignty. Sometimes a device that no longer does what it used to is enough.