A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.

Major power and telephone grids have long been controlled by computer networks, but now similar systems are embedded in such mundane objects as electric meters, alarm clocks, home refrigerators and thermostats, video cameras, bathroom scales, and Christmas-tree lights - all of which are, or soon will be, accessible remotely.

Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely, instead of making patients come in for a visit.

The Japanese drive on the left side of the road. Most streets literally do not have names.

The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent.

The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end.

The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.