Here is at least one endgame: the “smart home” and its “internet of things” are the canvas upon which the new markets in future behavior inscribe their presence and assert their demands in our most-intimate spaces. Key to the story is that all of this action is prosecuted in support of a larger market process that bets on the future of our behavior and over which we have no knowledge or control. Each node in the network—the vacuum cleaner, the mattress, the thermostat—must play its part, beginning with the frictionless rendition of behavior, as the whole team of seething insistent “smart” things joins the migration to surveillance revenues. As we are shorn of alternatives, we are forced to purchase products that we can never own while our payments fund our own surveillance and coercion. Adding insult to injury, data rendered by this wave of things are notoriously insecure and easily subject to breaches. Moreover, manufacturers have no legal responsibility to notify device owners when data are stolen or hacked.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 751