Your leader and special report on smart systems are almost endearing in their simplicity (“Living in a See-Through World” and “It’s a Smart World,” November 6, 2010). “As sensors become ever smaller and more versatile,” you enthuse, “they find their way into an ever-wider range of things, from aircraft engines and buildings to alarm clocks and farm animals.” This will make the world much more efficient. “The more data there are,” you explain with a bow to economics for beginners, “the more efficiently resources can be allocated.” And your special report oozes with examples of technological bliss to come. Efficiency has a dark side, of course, and you mention three areas of special concern: nasty hackers, even nastier autocratic governments, and an overall loss of privacy. Yuck! But the real dark side to technology, which seems to escape you entirely, is the status quo. The way things are. Just imagine smart systems magically introduced into the Roman empire at its height. Hackers, autocrats, and privacy would be big concerns even back then, and especially to the pampered classes, but smart systems could not possibly change the roots of Roman society. Or the way things were. Give or take a few things, everything would stay pretty much the same. And the most pampered among the Romans would wave their plump hands at the mind-boggling prospects of ever-smarter systems coming down the line: “O sancta simplicitas!”