Some things just drive me batty about technology. Nothing more so right now, than cables and power supplies.

I am currently on vacation, touring the Maritimes, but like any self respecting totally connected computer dude, I am equipped with every electronic convenience one could imagine.

I have a DVD player for the long rides, 2 iPods, my notebook, a GPS, my BlackBerry, noise canceling headphones, an EVDO wireless card for the notebook, and 2 digital cameras. I am having trouble finding room in my briefcase for a book or 2 with all this gadgetry.

It is all coming in very useful, but the cables, my goodness, the cables. Connecting all these devices to each other, and to the wall for power is becoming, well, not becoming it is ridiculous.

I mean most every one of these devices has, a USB cable to connect to the notebook, then a power cable then a car adaptor. I though we were moving into the wireless age! Doesn’t than mean no wires! As far as I can tell I am now more dependent on wires than ever before.

Case in point, we left Halifax last week to drive to Baddeck Nova Scotia, actually on Cape Bretton Island was is the summer home of Alexander Graham Bell. Someone who knew a thing or two about wires!

For some reason, I left the USB cable for my Blackberry in the Halifax hotel. No problem, I’ll drop into the local computer store in Baddeck and get a new one. While the store owner was thrilled to find a technology celebrity in his store, he had no cables to provide said celebrity, nope, nearest he could figure was Sidney or Antigonish.

So I milked the power on the Blackberry for 2 days, and stopped into a store in Antigonish as we took the next leg of our journey. They had cables all right, $39.00 for a $3.00 value cable!

Highway robbery aside, I had no choice but to purchase the cable. It is a very nice cable, just not worth $39.00

So where is the wireless benefit? Have you really looked at your desk recently, the spaghetti mess of cables snaking around, through and over everything. I think it is a bit like living in a trailer park, you get accustomed to the view and it just becomes home after a while.

Until we find a way to power all this gear for weeks at a time without recharging. Or we establish universal connectors that serve multiple systems we are going to have an ever increasing dependence on cables and wires even if our actual use of technology is wireless. Maintenance of gear, charging of gear is all reliant on wires and will be for the foreseeable future.

So do we live in the wireless age? Nope! Mostly, make that partially wireless, is the best we can currently claim.