If you like that kind of thing I recommend Eclipse Phase (which calls this idea a "Basilisk attack"). In the same general area, Blindsight by Peter Watts involves human perceptual flaws as a plot element.
Yay, good reference, I remember the story so well I knew the one you meant before I followed the link (I didn't remember the title).
However there have been similar ideas in earlier works, as acknowledged by the author himself. And if you asked the authors of those earlier works I'm sure they'd say they first thought of it when reading someone else's work - it's how it goes.
For what it's worth, the idea is similar to the deadliest joke sketch from the Monty Pythons, that predates most (but not all) the authors cited by Langford as influences:
Langford's later short story comp.basilisk FAQ, [1] first published in Nature in December 1999, mentions William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984), Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud (1957), J.B. Priestley's The Shapes of Sleep (1962), and Piers Anthony's Macroscope (1969) as containing a similar idea. Examples not mentioned include the short story White Cane 7.25 (1985) by Czech writer Ondřej Neff, A. E. van Vogt's War Against the Rull (1959), and John Barnes' Kaleidoscope Century (1996).
