I'm prone to a certain paranoia anyway, but after enduring all these terrifying headlines on the economy -- and recently reading a collection of Thomas Friedman essays -- I'm becoming convinced that unchecked capitalism is going to kill us. Seriously, I'm becoming a real communist over here. I've even busted out my old Mao jacket. Still fits, too.

As loyal readers know, I've kept my toes in a number of various industries besides consumer electronics over the years. Experimental carpentry. Avant-garde beverage research. Time travel. This sort of thing. I've also kept up with game design -- everyhting from board games to dice games to massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Keeps me young. And so I recently took a trip to the gaming world's annual mecca. 

When digital file-sharing via the Internet first made its tenuous inroads toward mainstream consumer acceptance, I did what I normally do in these situations. Extrapolated wildly on the potential application of such technology taken to extremes. I pictured a global cultural datasphere of all of our planet's film, music, books and art accessible by anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Counted them up today, and realized I now have four PCs and three Macs in the main office here at Dyscern World HQ. All are in various stages of decay and disrepair, and some are quite old indeed. The real artifact of the collection is a Macintosh 128K, which still works, barely, and which can still occasionally beat me at Risk.

I've been monkeying around in the lab this week, looking at backlight options for several new gadget initiatives here at Dyscern World HQ. Backlighting is one of those humble little technologies that you never really notice, but tend to miss it considerably when it's not working. Like the illumination on your watch or iPod. Or the dashboard display in your car. Or time machine. Once, due to a dim backlight, my trip to 1973 dumped me in the Precambrian era. That sucked.