Original subtitles

In 1966 Marie Van Britten Brown a black nurse in New York woke up from a nightmare

A recurring dream of her home being invaded

Her house had been frequently burgled

When she would call the police they would take hours to respond

And when they did they were potentially racist and violent towards her

If they even responded at all

Feeling unsafe in her own home and increasingly scared of the outside

She invented something to stop her nightmare

A new type of technology

A new type of doorbell

Drilling 4 peepholes into her front door each at different heights

In order to better survey the outside

She installed a motorised video camera that would move from peephole to peephole

Capturing everything happening on her doorstep

Transmitting it via radio signals to every television in the house

Images of the outside streamed into her home

Installing a screen next to her bed she became obsessed with this feed

Staying up all night watching what was happening on her doorstep

Losing the sleep she had been trying to protect

The finishing touches were a 2-way microphone for communicating with the outside

An audio recorder that would document every encounter

And finally an alarm that upon her touch would silently alert the police

Granting the authorities access to the video signal from her doorstep

For them to react to as they saw fit

Marie had invented the systems of modern home security

The instruments of domestic surveillance

She had reinvented the doorbell

Patenting her invention with an illustration of a white woman in bed

Awoken by working class men at her door

She sold her plans to various architectural firms

Largely those building gated suburban housing

Homes that she would never be allowed to live in

Interviewed decades later

Marie was asked is she was proud of the legacy of her invention

Her answer was decidedly mixed

Asked if her invention had made her feel safer

She did not answer

By shutting out the outside world

She had welcomed something much darker into her home

Into our homes to come

The future had become her nightmare

Her home had been invaded

Everyone evacuate the fire is coming up!

It’s okay girls.

Take your dogs.

In 2004 Jamie Siminoff woke up from a nightmare

A recurring dream in which he never became successful

He had started many businesses but all had failed

In the months since his last venture he had become increasingly depressed

Unable to get back to sleep her would post

quotes on his blog from the people he admired

Bezos, Gates, Jobs

He wanted to be a disrupter

To change whole industries with his inventions

When he really couldn’t sleep he would buy random things off eBay

By the time they arrived he had forgotten about his nocturnal purchases

Oh my god, why is he not answering me?

Cloistered in his garage searching for the thing to make him a success

He would often miss them being delivered

Seeing a problem he could solve

He invented a new type of doorbell

One that would notify his phone when someone rang his door

Showing him a live video feed of what was happening on his doorstep

While he stayed safely inside his home

He named it

Doorbot

You are fucking welcome!

Fucking heat index of 110

A few year later Doorbot was invited onto reality business T.V show Shark Tank

Where businesses argue for the financial backing of experts

Jamie’s pitch was based on convenience

It didn’t go well

The experts rejected Doorbot saying it was too niche

Hello?

UPS - Hi, I’m not home right now can you leave it?

Too tech focused

That they couldn’t see the potential

Yeah these are both for Bart but Bart wasn’t home.

Just leave them I’ll be home in just a minute.

Okay I’ll just put them behind the planter up here.

Okay, awesome, thanks.

Depressed again in his garage his wife Erin tried to cheer him up

Remarking how much safer she felt with Doorbot in their home

Jamie never planned on creating a surveillance network

But that’s exactly what he did

This girl left this door unlocked.

Hi Mary.

- Rose? - I can see you.

- Rose? - Mary. Turn around, turn around.

Turn around?

- What!? - I’m in the doorbell, I can see you.

- You gone crazy!? Whatcha doing!? - I can see you.

- Hello! - Hello?

This is Dominos.

- Yes? - Dominos, did you order food?

Actually hang on one second, the guy who ordered it will open that door.

- Hello? - Oh, okay

There we go.

- Whose there? - Dominos!

- Did you order food? - No I didn’t order any food!

Hey Mum, did Mac order food?

- There’s someone on… - I’m sure Mac did

Mum! Ma Ann Emily!

Hi Mum!

- Hang on bud, we’ll figure this out. - It’s my son.

My son Mac is upstairs, probably.

Hi Mum

- Yes? - Hi, we can see you.

Hey! Get out of there!

Get your butt out of there boy!

Go! Get out of there!

Vámonos! Vámonos!

I’ll kick your butt, I’ll kick your butt boy!

Little José, I’ll kick your butt boy!

Yes you! I see you! Get out of my plants!

Changing the marketing strategy Jamie rebranded his reassuring Doorbot

In came language around intruders, thieves and potential threats on your doorstep

His website changing from smiling families to men in balaclavas

He renamed his company

Ring

Two years later Amazon bought Ring and Jamie became a multi-millionaire

The doorbell he made in his garage became a key node in Amazon’s interest in security

Of providing the visual infrastructures needed for mass surveillance

He had become a success

He had conquered his nightmares by profiting off ours

Hello?

Hi, can I help you?

What’s up?

- May I speak to you for just 30 seconds? - No.

He ran into the neighbours house.

Reinventing the doorbell Jamie updated Marie’s Innovation

Replacing her constantly streaming camera with one equipped with motion and object detection

He wrote a new chapter in the history of the doorbell

Acting as a guard between the inside and out

A boundary between self and other

Through its tied-in app Ring reports the disturbances it perceives back to the owner

Flashing on their phone an ominous notification

Motion detected at your door

Upon opening a fish-eyed live stream of the outside fills the owner’s screen

A prompt below asking how they want to respond

Talk to the intruder?

Ignore the threat?

Save a video of this encounter and post it online?

The interactions Ring facilitates are never contained to the doorstep

They are meant to be shared

For the owners the images produced by their doorbells are a compelling reason to own the machines

For Ring they are its side effect

A visual by-product that produces the real commodities

Get away from the door!

The data the owners create

The access the doorbell grants

Part of the history of smart home devices

Technology that disrupts basic functions of living turning them into extractive sites of data

Ovens that inform your fridge when you’ve been eating too much

Fridges that tell your toothbrush to brush extra hard tonight

Toothbrushes that livestream the inside of your mouth to your dentist

Ring is the latest turn in these technologies

But unlike devices which promise internal convenience for the owner

Ring is explicitly about the owners fearful relationship to others

The threat of the outside

Ring is not a doorbell company

It’s a data company who produces doorbells

Its real customers are the companies it provides the owners data to

From the tech companies Jamie posted quotes about when he couldn’t sleep

Google, Facebook, Amazon

To the analytics and marketing companies such as

Mixpanel, Branch, Appsflyer

Providing them a wide spectrum of digital fingerprints

IP Addresses, Locations, Sensor Data

All gathered from Ring doorbells

But these tech companies aren’t the only ones interested in Ring

Hello, what are you doing in my house?

Can we keep everyone inside your house? We need to go to your backyard, if that’s alright?

So hold on a minute. Can we open the back gate?

I know I’m not who you are expecting. But your driver got arrested for speeding.

- So I’d figure I’d complete the DoorDash order for you. - Thank you so much!

- Take care. - Thanks!

- Okay I’m sheriff’s department, Detective Bush. - Yes Sir.

We had a little incident where someone was found hiding out in a trashcan out in front of your house.

- Okay. - And I just wanted to touch your door and make sure it’s locked.

- The backdoor is not locked. - Okay the backdoor is not locked.

- I don’t know if somebody… - We have the one person we are looking for.

But I don’t know how long he was in the trash can or if he went somewhere else.

I do have a motion camera inside the house and I’ve been looking and have not seen anything.

They have not activated. Good if you were to come home and find something askew call over to the sheriff’s department okay.

- Yes Sir. - And like I said my name is Detective Rick Bush.

- And you guys did find the suspect? - He was in your black trash can out front.

- He probably smells of dog poop. - Well we just get them how we get them Sir.

I like this Ring thing, super cool.

- Police! Search warrant! - Police! Search warrant!

Ring has become the all-seeing eye of contemporary policing

The doorbell owner’s its unwitting informants

When confronted with something happening on their doorstep

A notification flashes on the owners screen asking them if they wish to share this interaction

Connected to hyperlocal social media apps such as Nextdoor and Citizen

As well as Ring’s own social networking service Neighbours

Hello!?

What’s up!?

These apps allow users to share local knowledge to protect their neighbourhoods

In reality they function as breeding grounds for racist and classist paranoias

Digital town squares for mob justice

The images produced by Ring are disseminated on these apps

Tagged with words such as invader, criminal and threat

With a Facebook-like comment section, neighbours share their thoughts about these doorstep encounters

These networks are riddled with police

Both verified accounts and undercover operatives

Who directly contact users asking to view the data collected on their doorbell

Ring and the police claim they always ask for consent before doing this

Though that permission has often been secured through intimidation and harassment tactics

If the owners refuse to actively collude with the police

The police departments who have partnered with Ring can sign a form

A document that bypasses the owners wishes on the vague basis of public safety

It is unlikely that any police request has ever been rejected

And…

Bitch. I’ll break your fucking camera bitch.

You’re going to break your hand. Stop.

I’ll break that bitch. Watch me.

Ring is not a doorbell company

It’s a surveillance company who produces doorbells

While police actions have been aided by Ring’s proliferation

There is no evidence that Ring makes anyone safer

No crime statistic to justify its invasion into communities

And while there can be a legitimate need for home security

Ring has co-opted these concerns

Offering solutions rooted in racist and classist extractivist technologies

Counter to the marketing in a recent survey of Ring owners

Many claimed they were more anxious since they installed their doorbells

They felt like they knew too much about their neighbourhood

The trivial things that had never bothered them before

Kids running around

Cars passing by

Packages being delivered

Now those things scared them

With the buzzing of their phone they could see everything at any time

And with the associated apps they could know what their neighbours really thought

It had brought out everyone’s darker side

They had become customers rather than neighbours

Terrified consumers of each others fears

Asked if they would ever get rid of their doorbell most weren’t sure

It had become embedded into their daily lives

It had become a part of their houses

Jamie’s solution to his nightmare had invaded their homes

In 1906 in a Boston boarding house D.W Griffith work up from a nightmare

Someone was banging on his door

Pushing aside his copy of Oliver Twist which he had fallen asleep reading

He opened his door to find his landlady screaming

Someone was on the phone for him

That morning in San Francisco his fiancé Linda Arvidson had woken up in a panic

Hey!

Her home was shaking around her

Who can that be? Hendrix, quiet down.

Rushing outside she found her neighbourhood had collapsed

Her horizon was on fire

- Can we not have this conversation. - What is that you don’t believe?

Now she was on the phone telling Griffith that she was unharmed

She was safe from a disaster he had no idea had happened

Griffith felt like he was in two places at once

Paralysed by his inability to physically help

Sandy?

Yet emotionally present on the phone

- Alfred. - Yes Mrs. Harris.

I heard the alarm. Lights on.

Both inside his bedroom in Boston

And with Linda among the ruins of the largest earthquake in American history

What did you say?

I want to know who I’m talking to.

- That’s not what you said. - What do you think I said?

In the days to come Griffith was reminded of Oliver Twist

Hello?

Hello!?

How scenes could cut back-and-forth from one peril to another

With the reader maintaining what was happening in both places at once

That if connected through technology spaces could talk to each other

James?

Producing tension through each other

Zoey?

Zoey?

Mr. Sandin, you home?

Would you like to play a game? Tara.

Years later Griffith found himself on a movie set

He had become a film director

He was shooting a scene that cut from a terrified woman locked in her home

Terrorised by menacing vagrants outside that threaten to break-in

Solid.

To her husband on the phone in another part of town

Who will rush to save her

The film will be the first home invasion movie

Through its horror he could show off a new invention for organising space

Parallel Editing

After it the inside would never be inside again

It will always be in conversation with what is happening outside of itself

The threats waiting beyond sight

The technology which facilitated such horror was the telephone

It was a lifeline to the outside

Hello. Hello. Hello?

To the police or the victims husband who will come to the rescue

Operator.

Operator!

Operator.

Please Help!

But it was also a lifeline that could be cut off or interrupted

No!

Oh no! No! No!

Griffith’s invasion was inspired by the Parisian horror theatre of the turn of the century

One act plays about the terrors of the day

Car accidents

Outbreaks of diseases

Science experiments gone wrong

Miss Bradford?

Jill? Jill!

A recurring motif in these plays was the husband away at work

Leave me alone!

Jill, this is Sargent Sacker. Listen to me.

We’ve traced the call, its coming from inside the house.

A squad car is pull up right now. Just be of that house.

Listening on the phone to something terrible happening at his home

Jill!

- Casey! - She’s here!

Oh my god! I can hear her

It was the destruction of the bourgeois family

Where is she?

Technologically witnessed by the father who is incapable of intervening

Tormented by the sounds of unimaginable violence

And finally deafening silence

A nightmare of masculine impotence

Alright signal, c’mon!

And a shaken belief in the the power of policing to protect

Alright. Go fuck yourself!

When these plays found their way across the Atlantic the impotence had vanished

In cinemas eyes technology would save rather than torment

Connect more than it separates

From the 1960’s the calls came into the house

Who is it? Whose there?

Sam! Gloria! Somebody!

The outside came in

You were never truly alone with a phone line

Noooo!

Your home could be invaded through technology

A sinister voice on the other end of the line

Phyl! Pat! Please Answer Me!

Please Answer Me!

Reminding you of your own fragility

Hey! We’re not finished yet.

That technology could be used against you

Final Question. Are you ready?

Earlier in the century Freud had compared the phones ability to overcome distances

Of making inside out and outside in

Get the hell out!

To the magical powers bestowed upon people in fairy tales

- Do you see anything? - There’s nothing.

The bedtime stories we tell children to get them to sleep

Why won’t you give us the homeless man?

No-one will miss him when he’s gone. Pretty please!

Powers that seem good on the surface

But by the end reveal unforeseen consequences for those who desired them

Teaching us to be careful what we wish for

I shouldn’t even be here.

And to remember there is no place like home

The images produced by Ring doorbells were born from this history

The latest remake in a long line of home invasion cinema

Operational actualities haunted by Griffith’s narrative innovations

While potentially open for other uses

This is my house. I have to defend it.

As counter surveillance strategies

Or as evidence to be brought against those in power

These doorbell images are tainted

By-products of data collection and surveillance cultures

Their gaze is encoded with violent logics

That render every encounter a potential threat

As evidence of a crime about to take place

A horror film waiting on your doorstep

Please, I’ll tell you anything!

Please, no. No!

What is to be done with machines that don’t work for us?

It weren’t one of yours.

With systems that hinder radical futures

Oh fuck.

- Dad. - Yes Ralph.

That profit off convenience and use our fears against us

Sammy!

What good can be produced through our nightmares?

What strength can we gather from past struggles?

81st and West End Avenue. Three bedrooms, spacious living room. Cathedral windows.

You need all that space?

How about this? West 83rd, two bedroom, doorman building.

Park block, partial views, bright and cheery flat, high ceilings and wood floors.

Yeah, that one.

- Hey! - Wait, Sam! Sam! Sam!

Well you’re not going anywhere without me.

Don’t worry. I’m going to hold your hand all the way there.

What is to be done when our homes and our dreams have been invaded?

In 1811 Mary Molyneux, a textile worker from the North of England

Woke up in a panic from a nightmare

A recurring dreams of the cotton mill she worked at being invaded

Not by people but by technology

By machines that would half the labour and half the skill to operate

That granted convenience over quality

That would worsen the material conditions of her community

But this wasn’t her nocturnal subconscious running wild

This was reality knocking on her door

She was only 19 but in her few years major changes had occurred

Gone were the days of working at home amongst her family

Setting their own schedule

Crafting textiles with precision to sell to the mill

From now on if they wanted to work it would have to be inside the factory

Selling their home to move closer to the mill

Mary’s family moved into a smaller home with another family

In a time of great abundance for the mill owners

Her home had been invaded

Inside the mill out went the mechanical looms

Those that she had learnt on

Those that required technical expertise

An experience that resided in her body

And in came over 200 steam-powered looms

And with them dramatic pay decreases

Unable to sleep in her now cramped home

Mary would go out at night

Wandering the town she was guided by the new invention of gas lighting

That extended to night the security of the day

As well as the potential to work through the evenings

Craving the darkness she would walk the outskirts of the town

There she discovered other people who shared her nightmare

Looking over the illuminated town they would talk about their lives

Hatching plans to reimagine the future

One in which they could live in dignity alongside these new machines

That would work with them

Not against

When they demanded this from the mill owners they were met with derision

Writing to parliament got them nowhere

And the Crown busy fighting Napoleon had no time for them

They were exhausted

Their futures felt snuffed out

Until one night they heard of other people across the North

Who like them couldn’t sleep

Who in order to stop their nightmares had taken action

They were called

Luddites

They had invented a new way of resisting technological violences

A new strategy of collective bargaining

Through smashing up the machines that facilitated their oppression

That through the threat of their actions

They could secure better living standards from their employers

Deterring others from installing these machines

And by politicising technology encourage others to resist

By attacking the symbols of their alienation

Their actions became symbolic

The spanner in the imagination of the burgeoning tech classes

Like Mary they were highly technologically advanced workers

Thrown to the side by progress

The experts blowing the whistle from the inside

The call coming from inside the house

They showed Mary how to disrupt whole industries

To resist the logics which had invaded her home

By the time word of these actions had reached Mary

They had also spread to parliament

Though unwilling to assist in the plight of the textile workers

Parliament enacted a law

Making machine wrecking punishable by death

Sending out over twelve-thousand soldiers

To arrest anyone they believed to be connected to the Luddite actions

The government attempted to break a social movement by force of arms

On behalf of private property

But this lawmaking only made the Luddite actions increase in frequency and scope

One night in April

Mary and her new friends armed themselves

They were going to invade the cotton mill

The one they had been having nightmares about

Picking a rare night when the mill would be empty

They were going to destroy the machines which had stripped them of their labour

As they marched into the illuminated town they gathered supporters

By the time they reached the mill they were 200 strong

But there seemed no way of getting in

Tipped off by a government funded spy who had infiltrated the Luddites

The mill had been fortified

Doors barricaded to stop them being broken open

Most windows boarded up from the inside

Not to be deterred Mary threw the first stone

Smashing a side window

Using the pick from her loom she climbed inside

Mary was alone for the first time in the mill

The steam powered looms stood silent

When as if in a dream she heard the muffled screams of the crowd outside

They were shaking the mill door

Using all her strength she moved the barricade aside

The door flung open

The workers flooded in

The mill had been invaded

Grabbing their weapons the crowd swung at the machines

Mary screaming “Come on Lads!” to the workers

But the haphazard instruments they had brought with them were of no use

They had neither the tools

Nor the power to dismantle technology so complicated

Gathering straw from a nearby barn

They set fire to the low quality fabrics produced on the power looms

Combusting with the gas lighting inside

The mill burned beautifully

Returning home Mary fell peacefully asleep for the first time in years

The steam powered looms didn’t return to her town for another 30 years

The next morning the military spread through the town

Knocking on doors and breaking into people’s houses

Demanding information on the mill burning

Woken in a panic Mary’s home was invaded by soldiers

A known agitator she along with 14 others were rounded up

When questioned Mary pleaded her innocence

Claiming she was sound asleep when the mill burnt

All 14 others did the same, keeping to the secret oaths they had pledged

It was reported that they were all executed

As a warning of what happens when you resist technological progress

But the literature passed around by fellow Luddites at the time

Along with parish records

Tell a different story

In reality no one from the town came forward to identify the Luddites

Mary and her fellow workers were acquitted

Only 4 of the 15 were found guilty

Doomed by the letters they had written to the government funded spy

Though the spy themself never came forward for fear of retribution

The 4 luddites were hanged in the town square

By most historical accounts the Luddites failed

The labour saving machines were here to stay

Those who practiced their tactics executed

And any record of their successes suppressed

But for a brief moment they had invented a different future

A better relationship between technology and people

Between progress and community

Decades later Mary was said to sing Luddite protest songs around the home

Lullabies to help her grandchildren fall asleep

In 1817 in the suburbs of Birmingham William Murdoch woke up from a nightmare

A recurring dream of a factory being invaded by workers

He was sleeping alone in a large home that he had designed himself

Built from the profits of his invention

A method of using gas for lighting

He felt like there was someone outside looking in

Decades earlier he had been a patent inspector on the Cornish coast

His job was to go into factories using steam powered machines

Checking if his bosses’ patents had been infringed

One day in the summer of 1812 he was inspecting a tin smelting factory

When suddenly the doors were bolted shut

Outside were hundreds of rioting tin miners

Food prices had reached a new high and they were starving

They were there to demand better wages for their labour

Inspired by the Luddite revolts they took action

Banging on the door it reverberated around the factory

The sounds of the outside echoing inside

William barely escaped before the factory was invaded

Sitting up in bed listening to the wind he thought he heard someone outside

Was someone trying to break-in?

Were the miners coming to invade his home?

Or was someone trying to get his attention?

It was not unusual for him to receive surprise guests

Fellow inventors that had come from far-off places see his new home

To see the new technologies he had installed in it

If someone had knocked he wouldn’t have been able to hear them from his bedroom

Especially with weather so wild outside

Listening intently he heard nothing but the wind

Concluding that it was neither a guest nor an invader

He tried to go back to sleep

But his mind raced from the panic he had awoken to

Seeing a problem he could solve

He invented something to ease his nightmare

That through passing compressed air through the pipes inside his walls

Pushing the outside through the architecture of his home

At the press of a button his guests could alert him to their presence at his doorstep

No matter the weather

No matter if he was in bed

This device placating any rioting workers by focusing their anger

Reducing their gestures to the push of a button

Stripping them of the physical action of pounding on his door

The potentially violent escalation from knocking on to breaking-in

His eyes grew heavy and he could see the dawn break behind his curtains

The storm has passed, the night was over he could sleep again

Dreaming in the knowledge that his device would keep him safe in the future

He had invented a new type of technology

He had invented the doorbell

So here we are in front of Jamie Siminoff’s garage.

That’s where, next to the bin here. That’s where he invented…

Doorbot - Doorbot