Remember the "technicals"—those modifed Somalian pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in back? They make an apt metaphor for the kind of negatively recursive outcome you get whenever two items of technology combine to produce either less than the sum of their parts or something that works to the detriment of humanity.

To take a case in point, consider the Internet sales tax, now being levied by some major retailers. Tax plus Net equals a huge loss of potential as more structural framework is attached to the online experience.

Another example is Gizmodo, the bastard brain-child of Peter Rojas and Nick Denton. It's everything a blog shouldn't be: co-opted by megacorps to shill the latest high-tech trinkets via a Web-page that's basically one huge ad. Looking at it feels like your skull is being blowtorched while your eyes are being sucked out of their sockets. Of course, if you've just gotta have a Netgear MR314 Wireless Cable/DSL Router with 4-Port Switch, you're in for a treat.

We could safely posit that the number of negative implementations of any technology will double every year, leading to an exponential growth of waste and stupidity that erupts in polymer orgies like the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. Who do we blame for all this?

Moore Is Less

Maybe this guy, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore who recently appeared at the rather specialized International Solid-States Circuits Conference. Technically speaking, Moore's Law predicts that the number of transistors that can be crammed onto a chip will double every two years. So naturally, somebody asked him if his law is still in effect. "Another decade is probably straightforward," he says. "There is certainly no end to creativity." But not everyone agrees:

The tension between the optimists and the pessimists concerning Moore's Law largely seems to revolve around whether an individual sides with engineers or with the laws of physics.

This Could Be Real Trouble

In a development right out of science fiction, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist named Lawrence Farwell has developed a technique he calls Brain Fingerprinting out at his lab in Iowa. According to Farwell, our brains respond in a very specific way when we look at images of subjects with which we have prior experience.

Brain fingerprinting works by measuring and analyzing split-second spikes in electrical activity in the brain when it responds to something it recognizes.

For example, if a suspected murderer was shown a detail of the crime scene that only he would know, his brain would involuntarily register that knowledge. A person who had never seen that crime scene would show no reaction.

So, theoretically, the cops could haul you in, hook you up, and flash a picture of a joint or a weapon at you. Or maybe a picture of Abby Hoffman. They get good enough with this technology, they might be able to read your mind.

In a related story, researchers at Infineon Technologies in Germany have come up with a way to read the electrical signals in living nerve cells.

The Neuro-Chip, about the size of a fingernail, has 16,000 sensors that monitor electrical pulses in cells submerged in electrolyte nutrient fluid that coats the semiconductor and keeps the neurons alive.

A Different Kind of Hit Spike

In this case, it's the old-fashioned kind, brought to you by Team Ninja's new game, Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

All of this technology at our disposal, and what do we do with it?

You'll spend much of your time ogling the girls as they roll about in the sand, hop across the pool in a ludicrous minigame, and try to get comfortable on poolside deck chairs. The user-controller camera is free-ranging and fully willing to zoom in on whatever you wish to see. Don't worry, the software won't think less of you in the morning.

1:49:32 PM