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Short abstract:

This paper discusses how the rents users pay through their data are relevant not only for the digital platforms which they access, but also for the hardware companies which manufacture smart devices. In the case of hardware producers, worth is derived equally from retail prices and from data rents.

Long abstract:

The move from commodities to assets has been well documented in a variety of socio-economic areas ranging from the housing market (Aalbers 2017) to pharmaceutics patents (Bourgeron and Geiger, 2022). Furthermore, it has often been shown that this process lies at the heart of financialized capitalism more broadly (Langley, 2021). In this paper, I build on recent works about the specificities and different forms of data assetization (Sadowski 2019, Birch and Cochrane, 2021) and argue for the need to also reflect further on the relation between data rents and hardware production. To examine this further, I focus on smart technologies which are incorporated in any connected device, like the sensing appliances in our home. These are theoretically interesting objects, as they simultaneously represent commercialised goods and data extracting assets.

To illustrate, a smart fridge much like its non-digital counterpart, is a commodity with physical, positional and imaginative worth (Beckert 2011). However, importantly, the smart fridge is also monitoring its owner and extracting data regarding their patterns of consumption, energy usage, and home address; it can also get new features in time. In this respect, the smart fridge is a data-generating asset for the company which manufactured and sold it.

Data rents paid on various platforms are typically associated with a lack of ownership and with open access policies (Srnicek, 2016). By examining the business model behind smart devices, I shed light on a different dimension of rents paid through data as co-existing with, rather than replacing the exchange of commodities.