Excerpt:

I worry. About my family. My house. My dumb possessions, and my treasured ones. Doesn’t everyone? “Happiness,” Don Draper opines in Mad Men’s pilot, “is the freedom from fear.” Companies sell people solutions to those fears—even if they are contrived ones. Listerine, invented to cure a made-up condition called halitosis. Nike, whose kicks are used for sloth more than athleticism. Apple, whose modernist, glass-and-aluminum shields hide compulsion.

Just as people originally bought mobile phones to protect against hypothetical emergencies, so internet-connected smart devices now often sell comfort from fear. Motion cameras that deter evil babysitters. Recording doorbells that stave off solicitors and burglars. Propane scales that avert cook-out disaster. Sensor-tentacled boxes that warn against flooding.

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