Note: I swear this is the last election column I’ll do. At least until January. Or until more Palin-in-a-towel news surfaces.

This is what this country is coming to. And I say that in a good way, I think.

I left work on last week’s historic Election Day and went to a friend’s house in Fishers to sit in front of his 42-inch TV.

The polls were closed, so we did what seemingly every other American did: Watched as Anderson Cooper talked to a Will.I.Am hologram and pundits used “smart” touch screens to show all the scenarios where McCain might pull out a win.

We had champagne, a few snacks — and a laptop for almost every one of the 10 people at this gathering, each pilfering off the same wireless Internet connection. I’m pretty sure there were a few iPhones thrown into the mix, too.

We laughed at ourselves about it, of course, and the (few) people without computers made a couple of “Do we have enough computers?” quips, but the computerless were only half kidding. They knew, of course, that we probably did have enough computers.

We soon settled into our self-delegated roles. Some stuck to particular sites, holla-ing out numbers different from the TV’s. Others, the impatient ones — like me — kept flipping from tab to tab on Firefox.

It wasn’t good enough for us to rest on cnn.com. No, we had at least four news sites and a few blogs up on a variety of Toshibas and Dells and Macs. It was just a matter of which site we chose to believe at that point, and they were all different.

Alt + tab, refresh, repeat. All night long.

So with this oversaturation of technology, how’re we to pick which technologies we want? Between ridiculous holograms (aren’t holograms, like, so ‘80s? Never mind. I’m just thinking of Jem and the Holograms.) and flat-panel touch screens capable of everything but human hugs, are we buying into this by needing the Internet in our hands/laps/somewhereimmediatelyinfrontofournoses?

I hesitated before I took my computer with me, knowing there’d be a few there already. But it’s a laptop, and I wanted it to be with me. And…that’s the point. It’s my computer. I can search for what I want to see, in a room when eight other people are doing the same.

We want our information, we want it now, and we want to share it with people around us.

Like I said, Wolf Blitzer’s hologram can’t offer any celebratory hugs.