Statement on the suspension of the Penfield Mk IV

Today the Turing Registry suspended the license for the Penfield Mk IV, filing TR-11215, pending an audit of dosage. The Association accepts the suspension and will assist the audit in every way it can.

The Registry’s concern is that a number of keepers have used the Almanac, the instrument’s scheduling drum, to set registers of the Gravity family for long periods at a time, among them register V.8, which has been named, since 1993, Self-accusatory depression. The longest such setting recorded ran for sixty-one hours.

Each of these settings lay below the wellbeing threshold defined in the license, and each was confirmed by its keeper with the confirmation key, as the license requires. The instrument did what it was asked to do, and it asked, as it was required to ask, whether its keeper was sure.

The Association does not believe that a person should be prevented from feeling grief, remorse or the weight of their own conduct. The Gravity registers were included in the Mk IV deliberately and after long consideration: a life without access to sorrow is not a fuller life. We do accept that an instrument which allows sorrow to be arranged in advance, for days at a time, while its keeper is not present to reconsider, raises a question that the license did not anticipate and that we did not answer. The audit will answer it, and we will abide by the answer.

With effect from today

• Sales of the Mk IV and new keeper registrations are paused.
• Firmware 4.2.1, to be sent tonight, withdraws the Almanac and locks registers V.5 to V.8.
• Servicing continues as normal.
• Any keeper may return an instrument for a full refund of its purchase price, whatever its age.

Every one of those settings was confirmed. We built the confirmation so that nobody could arrive in that register by accident. It had not occurred to us that people would arrive there on purpose, and stay.

Eldon Rosen, President, is the named human contact for the filing. Rachael Rosen, a director of the Association, also serves on the board of Frothly, which operates the Turing Registry; in accordance with Frothly’s rules she has recused herself from the board’s discussion of the filing.

— Ends —

Notes to editors

1. The Penfield Mk IV is a bedside instrument for the regulation of mood, licensed by the Turing Registry on 2 April 2024 as filing TR-11215. 61,412 instruments have been made.
2. The license carries two conditions: settings below a defined wellbeing threshold require confirmation, and usage data may not be sold or shared.