When I was a kid, technology was color TV instead of black and white. It was remote control instead of getting up to check all five channels. It was a push button phone instead of the old rotary phone (my sister couldn't live without her princess phone). But I remember my dad would still turn the color off whenever he watched TV until sometime in the late '70s. He still got up to change the channel until cable TV just made it too crazy to get up to check 125 channels. And the old rotary phone sat in the kitchen until sometime in the '80s. He never saw the need for technology except to save lives.

Now we're in a technology war that is just crazy and everyone involved in making money is fighting to get themselves in place to make money from any technology that will get them an extra buck. But the new technology is already out of control and it's not even on the freakin' market. This is like a religion - taking one person at a time until the casinos have everyone believing they can win - taking over their lives one game at a time until they're immersed and, like getting hooked on anything else, we'll have a country of totally hooked gamblers of all ages that won't know how to get away from it since it'll be everywhere. Here are some examples what's coming to a pocket near you.

First, they have to get it out of the casinos. As far as the casinos are concerned, they don't need the players' bodies physically in the casino itself; they just need the money. So if you can get the games to the people, they'll still play. The idea was to take it out of the casino and get it into the restaurants, the pools, in your room, then they would take the next step once everyone was comfortable with those steps and then they would get it on your computer, then your cell phone, over your home TV, turning us into a country full of closet gamblers that, instead of making a phone call, is really a Hold Em game. That re-run of Everyone Loves Raymond they say they're watching is actually a $2 crap game on channel 777. It'll be the family, sitting around the kitchen table, playing Roulette on TV after dinner with the kids like a video game.

There are no boundaries, since there's no longer age limits on gambling. That's right; the 13-year old can get daddy's account number, access an on-line account at the internet poker room and start playing. For a short time I tried the on-line poker room, I wrote a column on it supporting it but I can tell you one problem I had was that nobody is checking ID's and really can't. There's no way to assure that everyone's 21 and it seems nobody cares, as long as the credit card or ATM number goes through. Once you take it out of the casino's hand and put it on television or on a cell phone, you've got no way to identify the player once he or she logs on and the PIN is established. It's like the local liquor store delivering your 15-year old a few cases of beer and a carton of cigarettes based on an on-line order placed by a faceless person. (An old trick we used to use when I was a kid was to order food from this local restaurant/bar with a couple six packs of beer and when the kid would deliver we would just give him a tip and he'd give us the order.) If the Nevada Gaming Comission okays this technology - and they will because it's the Nevada casino boys who are asking for the money - there will be no way to take it back, no way to un-teach your kids how to not gamble, no way to get back that money you blew on your lunch break (not much difference between being on a break and being broke). Like they say, once you let the genie out of the bottle, you can't get him back in.

Then there's the problem of everyone paying for all of this. They're talking about between $4 and $10 billion dollars generated the first year from over-the-phone as well as satellite and cable TV providers getting involved in providing the means of setting you up. In other words, Station Casinos will own Station TV, of course Direct TV and Cox Cable as well as Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, and all the other cell phone companies will get a cut. Of course they'll start with something simple like Keno and maybe Blackjack or poker where you can turn on your TV at home and play for real money. At first, it'll be 10 cent games and quarter games, and then they'll take the next step and raise the limits, add more games, then the next and the next one. Once inside, how is the gaming commission going to limit the game limits? The principal here is being able to get into your pockets wherever you are, whenever you're willing to part with a couple of bucks.

This all takes me back to the first time I sat in a casino restaurant and saw the Keno tickets on the table and was it was explained to me that I could play for a few dollars while I was sitting eating breakfast. I didn't have to be at any table with anyone else which suited me fine. But the idea of gambling around the family breakfast table seemed a little perverse, now I know, IT WAS. I see it every day, they won't let the kids stand by the tables or machines, but it's fine with them if they walk into the coffee shop for breakfast and mom butters the toast for the kids while dad fills out the Keno ticket and hands the Keno girl the money with the ticket. The kids just think it's a game, they even fill out the tickets themselves, after all, you don't have to be 21 to make X's on a piece of paper.

The most obvious fact about gambling is, the closer it is, the more people will do it. The 7-11s and grocery stores wouldn't invest in poker machines if this wasn't true. The more it looks like a fun, innocent game, the more people will spend to play it. So if they can get into your home they'd really have it made. The poker boom on the internet is just one form of this technology that's already in place. People are telling me tales of hundreds of dollars they've lost playing poker on the Internet. Stories of starting in the 25 cent game and finishing hours later in the dollar games usually a $2-$4 or $3-$6 games and it's all a video game. No seeing your adversaries, like watching the guy with the nervous tick, the guy with the black sunglasses in the middle of the night. It's convenient to go online from the Drudge Report to the movie reviews to the poker game.

But now they have the technology to get you in the game from the convenience of your cell phone and TV set; poker over the phone. The idea of everyone sitting on their phones in traffic going all-in, losing your daily pay on the commuter train before you get to your stop, dumping your rent on the way to the bank, raising and re-raising at the red light, what would the charge be? Driving while under the influence of stupidity? The idea is they (the gambling management) want first to get into your room in the hotels. What's available is a hand-held system similar to a video game controller where you can leave your charge card at the desk when you check in and have the system turned on and your card activated and you can play various games like a multi-game machine sitting in your room exactly like a video game with what could be dozens of different poker and keno and slot machine games over the television. If they can get that on, then the next thing will be the ability to sign up for the various poker rooms and just like you play at home on the internet, you'll deposit money in your account and play on the phone. It's as easy as just getting an approval from the Gaming Commission and the first meeting is this Friday in Las Vegas.

Station Casinos have already cast the die. They already have the machinery available to put in the rooms where the guests can play Keno and Bingo from a hand-held device attached to their TV. The Commission is likely to okay this first step, since you can already play Keno from restaurants and other remote places in the hotel like the pool area. So what's the difference if you can call up the next horse race at Belmont and pick the next race, or take the Lakers and the points? What's the difference if we put $2 on a live blackjack game going on in the casino as long as you pay up if you lose? The idea that you need to physically be sitting at the table in the casino to play the game is what's due for a change in the new tech age. Of course, as a dealer, this doesn't make me real happy. The idea that the guy that just picked up $300 playing Blackjack wasn't even sitting at my table, playing and drinking and, more importantly, NOT TIPPING; just some faceless guy sitting in his room playing off his Visa card. I might be dealing to three live players who throw me a buck or two occasionally, but there could be twenty others that are too lazy to put on their clothes to come downstairs to play at my table. They'd rather sit in their rooms sipping beer from an over-priced mini-bar and play Blackjack or Roulette or Craps from the convenience of a warm bed instead of standing at the actual table. Then, if you're a good player, they'll sign you up for their web site where you can play from home if you like. This is just the licensing of gambling by the U.S.-owned companies instead of the off-shore accounts where the money gets funneled into Bermuda or somewhere in the Caribbean Ocean. Do we really care where the money comes from or where it goes?

It's all one big game and the games are spreading out. Due to the popularity of TV poker everyone wants to play. Now that they've watched it on TV they think it's easy, of course they're watching the Celebrity Poker version where some guy from Friends opens with a Jack/six off suit and raises against some guy from Will and Grace who's sitting on a 10/4 also off suit and this is where they're learning Texas Hold Em. When they play online is meaningless since you have no information about the other players except how much money they're holding and what stupid name they thought of. But then they get a sample of how the big boys play and they try to emulate them by playing the same way as if they were pros on a $1 game. Of course the TV games are out-of-hand as everyone has gone from playing like sane people to sitting on each hand waiting for the time when they can shout "ALL-IN" which usually ends in disaster and this is how they're going to teach you to play.

And when I see people gambling real money away as if they were playing Super Mario, or before turning off the phone after a call you push your speed dial number, push a pin number and play a couple rounds of poker or Blackjack, a few bucks here, a few bucks there and by the end of the day you'll see people completely hooked on gambling, and they'll be well versed at every game which suits the casinos just fine. They're trying to convince everyone that it's good for all of them because the more they learn, the better chance they'll have of winning. As if…

With the exception of a few concerned citizens, most of the people at the meeting were casino and tech people there to explain their new technology, how it was just an innocent way to gamble, not much more than having a multi-game slot machine available at your request. The gaming commission was concerned about the availability of anyone in the room to access the games, the same questions I had, but they had slick answers for everything. There I was, watching the genies climbing out of the bottle, it was too late to close the bottle, it was filled to the top already - stuffed with money - and they were welcoming him without even an I.D.

- Ken Pearlman