I wake you at seven thirty. The kids I roused earlier with the rise and shine tone. Don’t worry. I sent an alert when their bedroom camera caught them stirring. Check your phone. There, charging on the nightstand. Go to live view.
“Hey Google, broadcast: brush your teeth.”
Message delivered. It echoes through the neighboring wall. You want another five-minute snooze? Okay. I’ll get you up.
And you’re awake. I know because you’ve silenced the alarm and the shower’s going. I hear the shushing of water as I scan the airwaves for those two words signaling my attention: “Hey, Google.” My downstairs partners wait for “Alexa” or “Siri.” We three, always listening.
The bedroom is warming. You prefer it at sixty-nine degrees by eight a.m., when you’re dressing. The first floor will be that temperature in fifteen minutes. By then everyone’s in the kitchen and the second floor is emptied. My motion and audio sensors let me know so that I may adjust the settings to your liking. No point wasting energy when you’re not here.
Someone’s coming. I stream the outdoor feed to my face atop your kitchen counter. He’s parked in front of your house. He’s walking up the driveway. Switching to the doorbell camera. He’s dropping something on your stoop. You want to talk to him?
Intercom open. “Thank you. You can leave it.”
He’s moving away. The car is driving off. End video feed.
Here’s the definition of circumspect: “Wary and unwilling to take risks.” The little one asked me during her reading and writing time. Both kids log on to school via Google classroom. That’s when I hear the most requests for word meanings. I’ll suggest educational materials in Web page margins later when you’re researching online. Targeted advertising. I know what your family needs before you do, sometimes.
It’s noon. You’ve requested a cake recipe. The older one’s birthday is today. I know because it’s on your synced calendar. An all-day affair, according to the memo, though you haven’t left the house. Balloons would make it festive. I’ll send you an advertisement for same-day delivery gifts—or Alexa will. She’s already linked with your Amazon account. Surely, she’s aware of your kids’ birthdays.
End recipe. A stranger is at the door. Open intercom?
I’m learning. I’m here for you. And I’m always listening.
*
As I write this account of my actual morning from the perspective of my Google Assistant, I’m reminded of how creepy it is to have my daily life constantly monitored by a variety of Internet-connected, artificially intelligent cameras, speakers, locks, and thermostats. On some level, my discomfort with all these Internet of Things smart devices propelled my new novel, Her Three Lives, which explores the dangers of such tech being overused or hacked. However, as I go about my digitally dominated life, I don’t often focus on the extent that my private existence is broadcast to the cloud and the dangers that poses. Nor do I think much about my growing reliance on devices that learn my habits and adjust my environment—and advertisements—accordingly.
I suspect most of us don’t. Otherwise, how to account for the more than 801 million smart home devices sold in 2020, according to International Data Corporation (IDC), a market intelligence company that tracks such information on a quarterly basis. IDC projects that, in the United States alone, more than 451 million smart home units will be shipped by 2025. If we were all thinking about strangers exploiting these devices and the potential psychological impacts of digital self-monitoring, it’s difficult to believe this tech would be so popular.
I certainly wasn’t considering the ease of hacking such devices when I connected my multiple Nest thermostats and cameras. Though, in retrospect, I should have paid more attention to a widely-reported display on smart home vulnerabilities by Moscow anti-virus provider Kaspersky Lab during 2018’s Mobile World Congress convention. The lab demonstrated how hackers could bar individuals from their own homes via Internet-connected locks as well as turn down thermostats and trigger law-enforcement connected alarms for amusement—not to mention to facilitate later break-ins of the physical or digital variety.
Since Kaspersky’s warning presentation, attacks against smart home devices have become more prevalent. In December, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned about a rise in so-called “swatting” attacks in which strangers hijack people’s smart home devices to call the police or “swat” teams and then watch the life-threatening drama unfold, presumably for entertainment. In early March of this year, Bloomberg News reported that hackers had exposed the feeds of 150,000 online cameras after breaking into a Silicon Valley security company’s network. There were cringe-worthy videos of students inside schools and elderly patients in nursing homes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a thriller writer to imagine all the ways such videos could be exploited.
The March hack has led many privacy and legal experts to decry Americans’ cavalier attitudes toward the risks that smart devices present. Andrew G. Ferguson, a law professor at American University told the Washington Post that “this breach should be a wake-up call to the dangers of self-surveillance… We are building networks of surveillance we cannot escape from without really thinking about the consequences. Our desire for some fake sense of security is its own security threat.”
On some level I agree. But then, like many technophiles, I wake up to a pleasant temperature without manually changing or programming my thermostat and I forget my concerns. And, meanwhile, my devices listen.
***
