An immediate digression from Vicky Wei's "USB Link" chainable flash drives (pictured): I despise cables. Like slug trails, their abhorrent knotted presence, twined and dangling around my study, is a perpetual muttering in my quiet temple of technology. Cat5, USB, Serial cable (Yes, RS232, in this day and age. I know, I know...), IEEE this-or-that, coaxial, and power cords of every imaginable gauge and color ... tentacles of copper and polyvinyl rule my kindgdom.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm dimly aware that when we're living in the future, a future of wireless power transmission, there will form a fashionable subculture called, perhaps, "cablepunk," wherein the technological accoutrements of our time (not the attitudes or mindset: this will not be "geekpunk," anymore than steampunk is "engineerpunk") rise from their memoptotic grave.

I have a feeling that the 2006 cables sold in the future might look rather like Wei's lovable and practical invention, except longer. In fact, if all the cables in my house looked like this, I'd want more!