Global conglomerate Grupo Carso, owned by Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim, occupies a very important place in the Mexican economy due to the diversity of commercial, communications, industrial, and consumer services it offers. In fact, Grupo Carso has almost absolute control of some services throughout Mexico.

In a near future, Grupo Carso might decide to establish its digital presence by creating or acquiring its own operating system, allowing the conglomerate to become ubiquitous in both the physical and digital realm.

The operating system of Grupo Carso would represent a technological monopoly, resulting in complete compatibility between devices, breaking with some of the current limitations of what we know today as the Internet of Things, and establishing new surveillance paradigms.

What would life be like in a world with an "Augmented Carso"?

It is logical to assume that productivity would be a priority for Augmented Carso; the company would likely use its new online and offline infrastructure to monitor the efficiency of its employees.

In this world, the physical office will track employees' behavior using accelerometers, face recognition cameras, and other sensors embedded into office accessories. These interconnected objects will not only observe the employee, but will even talk amongst themselves regarding each employee's performance.

Welcome to the Gossip of Things.

One device might trick a hyper-connected pen by constantly tapping the surface of the desk, leading the pen to assume that the dedicated employee is constantly on the verge of writing down an idea.

Another device might trick the computer mouse into appearing to be constantly scrolling, as if the employee were reading an endless PDF.

The last device might simulate the movement ones' eyes make when reading something on a screen, thus deceiving the computer system's facial recognition sensors.

Together, these three artifacts will work to trick the Gossip of Things, offering the overwhelmed employee precious minutes of simply doing nothing.

The motivation behind this project was to speculate how technological advance would happen in the Mexican context, where wellbeing is not the main drive in innovation, but profit and control. Mexico being a country where most of its population lives in extremely poverty is also the home of one of the most rich person in the world. The way Slim created his wealth is not by figuring out new products or challenging services, but by buying and selling bankrupt companies, by cleverly using legal gaps and moving through a corrupt political system, where each industry sector its being monopolizing by huge local companies or transnationals.

A consequence of this economical system is a world where there are not enough incentives to provoke creative destruction, and the developing of technology would have a completely different approach.

The approach taken to visualize this world was not from the point of view of the elite, but from the average person. By living in an environment where there is a great deal of control, one must think that the technology available in this Near future scenario would not be really generated, but "found". That's why we choose to use digital fabrication as in this Near future scenario would be considered archaic, as most of the machinery used to fabricate these gadgets, where not built during the Internet of Things craze.

We hope that with this speculative exercise, the audience could have a new paradigm on how society will cope with technology, not as generators but adaptors of this technology.

The following is the description on the designed scenario and how society would cope with being surveillanced by the company they work at.

"Global conglomerate Grupo Carso, owned by Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim, occupies a very important place in the Mexican economy due to the diversity of commercial, communications, industrial, and consumer services it offers. In fact, Grupo Carso has almost absolute control of some services throughout the country.

In a near future, Grupo Carso might decide to establish its digital presence by creating or acquiring its own operating system, allowing the conglomerate to become ubiquitous in both the physical and digital realm.

The operating system of Grupo Carso would represent a technological monopoly, resulting in complete compatibility between devices, breaking with some of the current limitations of what we know today as the Internet of Things, and establishing new surveillance paradigms.

What would life be like in a world with an "Augmented Carso"?

It is logical to assume that productivity would be a priority for Augmented Carso; the company would likely use its new online and offline infrastructure to monitor the efficiency of its employees.

In this world, the physical office will track employees' behavior using accelerometers, face recognition cameras, and other sensors embedded into office accessories. These interconnected objects will not only observe the employee, but will even talk amongst themselves regarding each employee's performance.

Welcome to the Gossip of Things.

The corporation will use this surveillance system to fully control each employee – every minute that the employee does not generate revenue for Augmented Carso will result in penalties and retaliation for their lack of efficiency and productivity.

This excess of surveillance will lead employees to look for alternative ways to escape the system.

Using desktop manufacturing methods, the rebel employee will create, use, and exchange items that will prevent office objects from gossiping about their performance.

What would these items look like?

One device might trick a hyper-connected pen by constantly tapping the surface of the desk, leading the pen to assume that the dedicated employee is constantly on the verge of writing down an idea.

Another device might trick the computer mouse into appearing to be constantly scrolling, as if the employee were reading an endless PDF.

The last device might simulate the movement ones' eyes make when reading something on a screen, thus deceiving the computer system's facial recognition sensors.

Together, these three artifacts will work to trick the Gossip of Things, offering the overwhelmed employee precious minutes of simply doing nothing."

This project is part of "Office Futures," a platform for speculating about the future of the workspace through research and critical design.