There are some obvious benefits to the “smartening” of systems, as well as some significant concerns. Few people would worry about a set of traffic lights deploying such technology to alert a control centre that a fault was developing, or the use of RFID tags to track the passage of prescription drugs around a hospital – but what about a smart television that not only listens to your conversation to identify voice commands, but potentially stores your words for future use in advertising or product placement? How about a doll that “converses” with your child and analyses the responses, perhaps sharing the data with third parties? These are both existing technologies – but their advertised uses could easily, and almost invisibly, be subverted.