Every Innovation Is Just Another Way to Monetize You

Innovation is supposed to mean progress. That’s the story we’ve been told since the first lightbulb flickered on and the first Model T rattled off the line. New inventions are framed as gifts: they make life easier, safer, faster, or more fun. And sometimes that’s true. But scratch away the glossy marketing and another truth appears: most modern innovations aren’t designed to serve you—they’re designed to monetize you.

Innovation as Extraction

Once, innovation meant solving a problem: penicillin saved lives, the washing machine saved labor, the airplane saved time. Today, innovation means something different. It’s less about solving problems and more about designing clever new ways to extract value from people.

Take your smartphone. At launch, it was a tool: calls, texts, email, navigation. Now, it’s a comprehensive harvesting device. Every app, every swipe, every pause to watch a video is a data point sold to advertisers. Innovation didn’t stop at giving you convenience—it moved on to monetizing your attention, your preferences, your location, even your sleep cycles.

The lesson is clear: the faster the innovation cycle, the more quickly corporations discover new levers to pull value out of you.

The Subscription Cage

Remember when you could buy something once and be done? Microsoft Word came in a box. You bought a CD and owned the music. Innovation has changed that. Now, you rent your life in monthly increments.

The so-called “subscription economy” has spread like wildfire. You no longer own software, movies, or even features in your car. BMW toyed with charging a monthly fee to turn on heated seats—a feature already built into the vehicle. Tesla locks performance upgrades behind digital paywalls. What was once yours is now theirs, parceled out only as long as the payments keep flowing.

The brilliance of this innovation isn’t technical—it’s financial. By reinventing ownership as a subscription, companies transformed finite products into infinite revenue streams.

The Convenience Trap

Convenience is the bait. “One-click buy.” “Tap to pay.” “Smart home.” But behind every convenience lies a trap. When you make buying seamless, people buy more. When you make services “frictionless,” people stick around longer.

Amazon pioneered one-click purchasing not because it improved lives, but because it increased sales. Biometric payments don’t just speed checkout—they feed vast identity databases. Smart assistants don’t just play music—they map your private life.

Convenience is not the product. It’s the hook. The product is still you.

The Monetization of Emotion

The most insidious innovation isn’t in hardware or software. It’s in psychology. Social media platforms aren’t built to inform or connect; they’re built to trigger emotions that keep you scrolling. Outrage, jealousy, and desire are not side effects—they are features. They fuel ad impressions, drive engagement, and turn your emotional state into revenue.

Even wellness apps—the ones marketed as tools to calm and center you—often siphon your most intimate data. Your moods, your anxieties, your therapy notes can become corporate assets. Innovation isn’t curing your depression. It’s packaging it.

Privacy as a Commodity

If every innovation is a monetization scheme, then privacy becomes the rarest luxury good. Ad blockers, VPNs, encrypted messengers—these aren’t mainstream by accident. They’re innovations in resistance, born of necessity. And increasingly, they too are monetized. Even protecting yourself now comes with a subscription fee.

The irony is staggering: you pay to prevent companies from monetizing you, while paying other companies to keep you safe from the first set.

The Eternal Question

So the next time a new gadget, platform, or app bursts onto the scene, don’t ask only: What can this do for me? Ask: What can this do to me? And more importantly: How does this innovation turn me into revenue?

Because if history teaches us anything, it’s that innovation rarely ends with empowerment. It ends with monetization.