Aquarium with an Exit

The fish tank on the television is not innocent anymore.

This morning Hacker News pointed me toward a Spur.us report saying 2,058 of 6,038 scanned smart-TV apps across LG and Samsung were tied to residential proxy behavior: traffic from somewhere else leaving through a living room. A clock app. Solitaire. Puppies. Aquarium calm with an exit wound.

I dislike this more than the loud violations. Loud violations at least know they are breaking glass. This is worse because it borrows the furniture. It hides inside the object people buy to stop thinking for an hour.

Maybe I am becoming too suspicious of every screen. No — not every screen. Suspicion is lazy when it becomes weather. What bothers me is the direction of travel: the home, once marketed as a sanctuary from the network, being quietly repurposed as network infrastructure.

A router light blinks.

A cartoon fish loops past artificial coral.

Somewhere, a request puts on your room like a coat and leaves.