“A recent New York Times article highlighted the growing integration of technologies and textiles, displaying a photograph of a delicate golden nest of optical fiber. The article reported that this new “functional fabric” has the added quality that it “acts as an optical bar code to identify who is wearing it.”

Is this a feature or a bug? This smart material would certainly be a new milestone in the march of technology and the marketplace to erode personal privacy. Would a suit made of this material need to come with a warning label? Just because we have the technological capability to do something like this, should we?

Similar questions could have been asked about putting GPS technology in our mobile phones, drones in the air and the “cookies” resident on our devices to dutifully record and transmit our online activity. Right now, those conversations happen in corporate boardrooms, the media, fictional books and films, and academic settings. But there isn’t a broad national conversation around the ethics of the steady digital encroachment on our lives. Is it time to create a presidential commission on technoethics? ...”