Much like you can find anything you ever need or want to know on Google, you can buy anything you ever need or want through Amazon. Not long ago, round about the time the first version of the Kindle was introduced, the ecommerce goliath decided that just selling stuff wasn’t enough—they also wanted to make stuff. In the years since, they’ve thrown their hats in the streaming video and smartphone rings, among others. Now, they want to sell you stuff that will help them sell you more stuff.
Cashing In On the Laziness & Gullibility of America as A Whole

Somewhat surprisingly, Amazon’s stock fell by almost a quarter over the past year. Maybe marketing their gods awful Fire smartphone by implying that it will turn kids into little hipster douchebags was not the best move.

With their slowly slipping fortunes in mind, Jeff Bezos and the gang are working to give customers the shopping experience they don’t even remotely need, but will undoubtedly want because Amazon will tell them they do.

Amazon’s gameplan is to create a completely integrated, “smart” home that can tell people what they need to buy before they know they need to buy it. Because keeping track of how much toilet paper you’ve got on hand is so difficult, you know? Just let Amazon’s robots tell you when to buy stuff—they know what’s best for you, after all.

While the smart home is not an entirely new concept—see the Google Nest or the Apple HomeKit—the “everything at the push of a button” nature of Amazon makes their version a far more nefarious concept. Why think or buy things for yourself when you can have the world’s largest retailer wire up your whole house and do it all for you?

“Honey, why are there 9,000 coffee filters in the pantry?” The Google-house said we needed ‘em. “Oh, okay. Thanks, Google-house!”
Area 51 Lab 126

To help them get their money-grubbing hands on more of their customers’ cash, Amazon plans to expand their staff by 27 percent and invest $55 million into Lab 126, its secretive, Silicon Valley-based hardware development facility. There, the quest to create hardware that takes away as much of your money and privacy as possible is underway.

According to the good people at Reuters, “Amazon envisions homes decked out with internet-connected sensors that would allow it to tell customer ahead of time when they need to replace air conditioner filters or service their washing machines.”

Because, again, who can be bothered to just keep track of that stuff on their own, when there are so many more important things to which we can devote our time? You know, like listening to podcasts and sharing pictures of the totes amazeballs organic quinoa quiche we had at brunch.

Reportedly, an accompanying “wearable device” is a part of Amazon’s plot. Which is good, because I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to be stupid slaves to technology and look stupid at the same time.