Finally, I want to underscore that although it may be possible to imagine something like the “internet of things” without surveillance capitalism, it is impossible to imagine surveillance capitalism without something like the “internet of things.” Every command arising from the prediction imperative requires this pervasive real-world material “knowing and doing” presence. The new apparatus is the material expression of the prediction imperative, and it represents a new kind of power animated by the economic compulsion toward certainty. Two vectors converge in this fact: the early ideals of ubiquitous computing and the economic imperatives of surveillance capitalism.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 632