Marx in the Smart Living Room. What would a Marx-Oriented Approach to Smart Objects be Like?

This chapter asks: what would a Marx-oriented approach to smart objects be like? As an exercise in ‘philoso-fiction’ it mobilizes critical thinking around the organization of the forces of production of digital devices. The chapter imagines how a smart environment would appear to Marx as an ecosystem of intensely alienating and fetished commodities. The chapter examines alienation and the disjuncture inherent to smart objects: while they support and enable users, they also capture (and trade) users’ data, time, and attention. Smart environments claim to personalize and tailor their presence to individual needs, but they also intrude in, monitor and control human life, thus enabling new techno-digital forms of alienation where user, content provider and product collapse in one single ‘datified’ role. The chapter offers a conceptual framework to locate smart commodity fetishism and alienation within the context provided by the politics of extractive capitalism.