Even before a Nigerian with Al Qaeda links tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet headed to Detroit, travelers could see we had made no progress toward a technologically wondrous Philip K. Dick universe.

Does no one on the NYTimes’ copyedited staff read Science Fiction? I can’t decide if this is a deeply ironic reference to Dick or just an incredibly ill-conceived one. The rest of the editorial reads like a paean to technology providing security, which is hardly Dick’s point. It reads like Ms. Dowd needed a SciFi reference and picked Dick because she knew he’s written about security technology. But Dick is largely a dystopian writer - hardly a useful supporting character in this piece. I don’t particularly agree with them, but David Brin or Vernor Vinge would be much better references in this context.