Presentations

“Circuits of Control: Smart Video Doorbells, Automated Labor Surveillance, and the New Frontier of the Social Factory”, American Studies Association, Puerto Rico, November 2025

“Labor Politics at the Doorstep: Automated Surveillance in the Gig Economy”, European Trade Union Institute ‘Cyborg Workers 2.0 Conference’, Brussels, Belgium, February 2024

“Home Surveillance: Computer Vision, Witnessing, and Knowledge Production”, Society for the Social Studies of Science, Honolulu, HI, November 2023

“The New Neighborhood Watch: Ring Doorbells and the Network of ‘Neighborly’ Surveillance”, American Studies Association, Montreal, November 2023

Publications

Dissertation

“Informants in Residence: A History of Smart Home Devices, Data Collection Infrastructures, and the Reconfiguration of the 21st Century American Home”

My dissertation examines the history and political economy of cloud-based smart home devices (CSHDs) within the United States. The dissertation aims to answer two questions. First, why have unnecessary, privacy-invasive CSHDs become so popular within the US? And second, how do CSHDs reconfigure the wired home, affect its inhabitants, and alter the modalities of control for government and corporate entities? To answer the first question, chapters one and two investigate the supply and demand of CSHDs. Examining the supply side, chapter one unpacks the business rationale for the mass production of CSHDs, identifies key technological developments that enabled these devices, and investigates the duplicitous marketing and design tactics leveraged both to entice consumers and to distract them from the risks of data-collection entailed by CSHDs. Analyzing the massive demand for CSHDs, chapter two highlights cases in which informed users enthusiastically embrace the data-collecting functions of CSHDs. In my ethnographic interviews, several interview subjects expressed enthusiasm about the data-collecting functions of specific smart home devices. By grappling with the nuances of these privacy risk assessments, scholars can develop more precise understandings of consumer decision-making, the normalization of data-driven surveillance, and the reasons for the mass consumption of both CSHDs and other data-collecting personal devices. Finally, chapters three and four examine how CSHDs transform wired space, both within the home and without. Focusing on Amazon Ring Video Doorbells’ partnerships with law enforcement, I demonstrate that CSHDs reconfigure private residences into information-gathering hubs for law enforcement, government agencies, and tech companies.

Motivations and Interventions

Michael’s research contributes to conversations about the risks and benefits of AI-infused smart technologies, particularly as they are deployed for the purposes of governance. Many policymakers and scholars suggest that intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) devices can help to fix various complex social problems. These commentators emphasize that AI-infused systems outperform alternate approaches according to metrics of efficiency, convenience, and security; however, they often fail to acknowledge the fact that enhanced security for some implies less security and increased marginalization for others.

Instead of speculating about potential improvements in efficiency and convenience, Michael’s work foregrounds the observable impacts of these tools, with a special interest in the way they are integrated into policing, labor surveillance, and immigration enforcement. In doing so, he demonstrates the specific ways in which AI-infused IoT devices expand the scope and scale of government surveillance and corporate control, with harms felt most directly by marginalized groups and precarious laborers. While there are surely arenas where smart technologies and big data can be leveraged for social good, Michael’s research shows the importance of using interdisciplinary methods and humanistic frameworks for understanding the full political and ethical stakes of particular systems. Thus, his work provides a necessary counterbalance to techno-solutionist approaches to governance.