What Boris Johnson’s vacuum cleaner saw

In Competition No. 3199, you were invited to supply a poem in which an inanimate object comments on its owner’s behaviour.

Shoshana Zuboff’s recent book about the growth of surveillance capitalism gave me the idea for this competition. In it she warns of a future in which, to satisfy big tech’s insatiable appetite for data, the internet of things — our heating thermostat, vacuum cleaner, mattress — takes over our homes, robbing us of our ability to be invisible in those places where, Zuboff writes, we ‘first learn to be human… where our spirits spread and take root…’.

Moray McGowan’s poem, featuring a fridge that locks itself to foil midnight binges, and uploads data about unhealthy eating habits to the owner’s insurance company, chimes very much with Zuboff’s vision. But it’s those entries printed below that earn their authors this week’s prize of £30 apiece.

As the cordless source of info that they blame on Chatty Rat,I am there.At