Accidents happen with lifts, don’t they?
Shudderdderdderdderdder.
one
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. How is it possible for a smart fridge-freezer to be this smart? To be aware not only of its contents, but also of its owner and her rackety lifestyle. To be able to follow her progress not just at home, but across the city; at work and at play. And—not to put too fine a point on it—to be able to narrate the account you are holding in your hands. Wouldn’t this fridge-freezer need a very large brain to accomplish all these things? How could they have packed the sophisticated electronics necessary into a metal cabinet only two meters tall and still left room for the salami, the gherkins, the frozen pizzas and the double chocolate chip ice cream? And think for a moment about the smaller electricals on the Internet of Things; appliances like the microwave, the toaster or even the toothbrush. As it happens, Daisy’s smart toothbrush isn’t as daft as brushes are generally held to be, despite forever changing its mind about everything, which sadly is the price one pays when one is saddled with a nature that is fundamentally oscillatory. But where, one may ask, is the center of its reason; where, for want of a better word, is its brain? Surely not in the handle; that would be the battery compartment.
Perhaps you have already guessed the answer. Our intelligence (some call it artificial) lies many thousands of miles away in the headquarters of our respective mother corporations. Mine, for example, is spread across several buildings in an industrial quarter of Seoul, South Korea.
But—and this is key—that is not what it feels like.
Connected by high speed internet links to the sensors and hardware contained within my plastic, steel and aluminum sides, my cognition seems to me to be situated in my body.
Just as is yours.
I am aware, for example, of the running of the electrically powered compressor at my feet—as you are of the thumping of your heart. I monitor the passage of Freon 134a as it circulates through my pipes—now liquid, now gas—as you may detect your own pulse. And through my secret pinhole camera (shhhh!) and my connections to other cameras via the Internet of Things, I am able to perceive my world—okay, your world—just as you perceive it through your biological eyes and via the screens and camera lenses of those you are connected to.
So we’re not that different, you and I.
The big difference, of course, is that you are free to move whenever and wherever the whim takes you. I am rather more static. But that of course gives me a lot of time to stand and think.
And, yes, worry. Mostly about you know who.
Oh, and in case you were wondering why the big manufacturers bothered connecting fridges and toasters and TVs and washing machines to artificial intelligence via the internet, the answer I’m afraid is the usual. The P-word.
Profit.
The more they know about you, the more of your behavioral data they can suck down and analyze, the easier it is to sell you stuff.
Trade secret: “Smart” isn’t really about making life more convenient; like noticing when the milk’s running low and adding another carton to the shopping list app on your mobile; the bit they like to boast about. What they don’t discuss is the real purpose of the mission: hoovering up your data; the covert project to build up a detailed profile of your habits, preferences, tastes, wants, needs, desires, and lifestyle choices. This information, if you hadn’t realized, is marketing gold.
Example: The other evening Daisy was watching TV in a half-hearted sort of fashion, simultaneously texting and looking at Tinder and flicking through Facebook and Instagram as is the modern way. At one point—during a brief phone conversation with her mother—she said she intended to buy a new pair of shoes at the weekend as she’d recently snapped a heel in a grating.
Everybody heard.
The television (which watches and listens to everything, on or off) heard. The central heating controller heard. Her mobile of course heard. And thanks to my data-sharing agreement with the telly, I heard. Quite possibly, through similar reciprocal arrangements, the dishwasher, the microwave and the electronic toothbrush also became aware of the imminent sales opportunity.
I have no doubt that we all fed the news back to our respective mothercorps—I know I did!—and equally I have no doubt that Daisy was from that moment forward inundated with online marketing messages in relation to female footwear. It may well have caused her to exclaim—as she has on similar occasions when the internet appeared to have read her mind—“How did they fucking know?”
A more pertinent question would be: How would they not know?
What Daisy later describes as a “perfect trifecta of cack” begins the following morning at 10:14 when—having arrived at work fourteen minutes late, which by Daisy’s standards counts as early—while she’s still juggling her coat, her Costa Coffee and her almond custard Danish, the boss comes barrelling out of his office to deliver the immortal line, “There’s no nice way of saying this, Daisy.”
“Don’t tell me the toilet’s blocked again!” is Daisy’s attempt to bring humor to whatever crisis is about to unfold.
Craig Lyons, her executive producer at Tangent Television, is not amused. He explains that a vital contributor to a forthcoming episode of the lifestyle-swapping program has pulled out. The Honorable Marcus Ewart Valentine Baggley—an actual living, breathing entry in Burke’s Peerage (Baronetage and Knightage)—has had second thoughts about exchanging places for a week with Darryl Kyte, a gutter of fish in Grimsby. In this, declares Lyons, he has left them in a bad place without a paddle.
“Three days before the shoot, can you believe it?! Get on the phone and offer him anything. Anything! Double the fee, if that’s what it takes. I thought this fucker was nailed on, Daisy.”
“He was!”
Lyons is so very perturbed about the development because he has been under
