The idea of the smart home has become one of the most banal promises of our technological era—a tableau of blinking lights and talking boxes dressed in the language of intelligence. We have filled our homes with sensors and switches, thermostats and speakers, and yet we remain fundamentally estranged from the very infrastructure that makes modern domestic life possible. If these are our “smart” homes, then the word has lost all seriousness.

In 1909, six years after the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk, the entire United States military owned precisely one functioning airplane. It was considered more spectacle than instrument, a contraption whose potential was dwarfed by the elegance of cavalry and the proven power of artillery.