Technology

 Cracked has a whole section on Technology here.  Technology surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.  Some of it is necessary (cars, Playstation 3, cell phones, etc.); some of it is not necessary (Amazon Kindle, roomba, everything on this list - 6 Most Overhyped Technologies); and most of it can kill us (robots, Large Hadron Collider, weapons, but mostly robots).

Pictured above: Colonel Sanders and his secret blend of diodes and cathode ray tubes and the secret ingredient - the steering wheel of a boat.

The most common use of technology is computers.  Batman uses them to fight crime.  The Matrix uses them to eat us.  Men use them to download porn.  Computers have completely changed the way the world works.  You can download MP3 playlists from official terrorist webpages, virginity can be bought and sold on eBay (sorry ladies, you can only buy other people's virginity - you cannot buy your own back), we can look in people's living rooms and see into their back yards on Google Maps, and if you haven't heard, you can also download music that you haven't paid for.  Their uses are seemingly without limit.  Or so Hollywood would have us believe (see Cracked article 5 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do). 

Hollywood isn't the only one trying to capitalize on computer hype (see Cracked article 10 Most Baffling Computer Gadgets Money Can Buy).  Spoiler: there is a humping dog USB dongle. 

The PC v. Mac Debate:

On the one hand, Macs never crash and have better hardware and are hackerproof.  On the other hand, shut the fuck up. 

 There are two types of robots:  1) robots that serve no purpose, and 2) the robots that will eventuall kill us.  Here's a run down of both types. 

Type I Robots:  Robots That Serve No Purpose:

This article, The 7 Creepiest Real Life Robots, pretty much sums up what a useless robot is.  Basically, a useless robot is one that doesn't do anything that a human can't do.  For example, you just dedicated your life to creating a robot that gets irritated when you poke his face?  Congratulations.  You just built a robot that can kick and cry like a 2-year old baby?  I'm sure the other passengers on the plane will want to sleep with you now.  We don't know why these people build these robots, but by all accounts, they are pretty damn good at it and it's probably a good thing that they are not building the killer robots.

Type II Robots:  Robots that will eventually kill us:

All robots just want to kill us, it's just a matter of whether they were built with the capability of doing so.  Reason:  They are assholes.  We are no threat to robots (by "we" we mean everyone except John Connor).  Humans don't get in the way of robots or prevent them from doing what ever it is that robots do.  Robots just hate us (See Cracked article Science is a Dick: 5 Most Evil Robots ever invented and 20 Japanese Robots Probably Intent on Murdering You).  Look at Skynet.  Its very first thought is to blow up the whole world with nuclear weapons and build terminators.  And let's look at the robots in the Matrix: 

Robot 1:  "We have unlimited technology and ability and we need energy.  Should we look for a solution to clean up the skies?"

Robot 2: "Or we could just eat baby humans."

Robot 1: "I like it."

And then there's the Decepticons.  They build a teleportation bridge to Cybertron in Season 1, but stay on Earth and just blow stuff up and do things like bribe politicians and drill holes under Central park to take over New York City for no real reason.

Pictured above: the most fearsome robot of all time, Megatron.  Embarrassingly enough, the Michael Bay version looked cooler, but had a much less erect penis. 

Nothing has put more technology into the hands of the computer illiterate than the iPod.  iPods are basically MP3 players, except you can only use them with proprietary software and you can't share your music with other people and they scratch easily.  Also, they have a click wheel in the middle.  They have hard drives in them so you can listen to an enormous amount of music on them.  You know that Limp Bizkit CD you bought 10 years ago?  Well, now can listen to it everywhere and all the time.  In 2007, Apple came out with the iPhone.  It was loaded with crazy features like the Internet and an MP3 player.  All kinds of apps started coming out for the iPhone, like a level.  So you can pound nails into the wall with full confidence that they are level.  Here are 20 features the next iPhone should totally have.

For most of us, playing video games was our first exposure to technology.  Now, we have the PS3, the X-box 360, the PC games, the Wii, but things were not always so refined.  The new task of designing video games and marketing them to kids proved to be extremely difficult to adults who grew up entertaining themselves by watching Leave It To Beaver. 

In retrospect, it has become crystal clear that they had no fucking idea what they were doing.  Here's the proof:

Here's how they used to convince us to buy video games:  6 Baffling Old-School Video Game Commercials.

Here's the consoles they came up with:  The 6 Most Retarded Gaming Consoles Ever Released.

Here are the accessories they tried to sell us:  6 Most Ill Conceived Video Game Accessories

So programmers kind of groped around in the dark trying to find out how to entertain these '80s kids and came up with the various Atari systems.  Then, we got the NES and got some real classics like Zelda and Willow and Battletoads.  Sega entered the video game arena and brought us the Sega Genesis packaged with Altered Beast, the first of many embarrasingly horrible failures for Sega, followed by the Game Gear and the Sega CD and the Nomad and the Saturn and the Dreamcast.  The Playstation represented the first of the next generation systems (read: systems we were not embarassed to admit owning).  It had such classics as Final Fantasy 7, Resident Evil, the Twisted Metal series, and Tomb Raider.  The Playstation 2 came out as well as Microsoft's X-Box, which had some awesome games and graphics.  Then, things started getting serious.  We got the X-Box 360 and the PS3 and the Wii. For details on those systems, see their individual topic pages.

Ever since technology was invented by the Romans and later refined by the ideas of such sci-fi authors as L. Ron Hubbard and George Lucas, people have been trying to harness its power to kill other people.  The problem is that people are getting really good at it.  Check out 5 Famous Sci-Fi Weapons that they're actually building right now and 6 Non-lethal weapons that will make you wish you were dead.

1.  This guy replaces his amputated finger with a USB drive.

Also available in black and Asian.

2 TB SD memory cards:  You know, those things that you put in your camer and in your phone to save your pictures and your downloaded music?  Well, here is some news from sdcard.org about the soon to be released 2 TB SD card (which is probably 1000 times bigger than the one you have in your camera):

SDXC (eXtended Capacity) Cards: The Next Generation

The next-generation SDXC (eXtended Capacity) memory card specification, pending release in Q1 2009, dramatically improves consumers’ digital lifestyles by increasing storage capacity from 32 GB up to 2 TB and increasing SD interface read/write speeds to 104 MB per second in 2009 with a road map to 300 MB per second. SDXC will allow your electronic devices – from laptops to cameras, camcorders and mobile phones – to store more content and to download content faster than ever before.

Keep in mind that SID 6.7 was a built in a fist-sized 50 TB card.

A TV Fit For Lord Xenu:

Sharp Aquos announces a 65 inch LCD TV with 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio that is 1 inch thick.  That means it is thinner than your laptop and has 1 million different shades of gray.  Also, just because, it has an optional wireless HDMI input option so you can wirelessly stream blu-ray quality picture to your TV.  It also adjusts brightness based on ambient light. 

Control 3-D projected holograms with your fingertips like in Ironman and Minority Report:

Microsoft Surface:

Microsoft has come out with a touchscreen interactive surface ala Quantum of Solace.

Because nothing is cooler than knowing exactly where to put your iPod Zune on your $15,000 coffee table