Election night 2008 -- or was it 3008?

As the years have passed, the broadcast and cable news outlets have slowly begun developing new and better ways to disseminate information to the masses, as well as gather that information for themselves. In recent years, that has led to use of live-blogging, instant messaging, and even webcams to communicate with the masses. All of these are fine ways to tell me what's going on in the world, I suppose, especially when we're talking about things that are of utmost importance, including the election of a new American president. (The jury's still out on news broadcasts in HD, though; I'm not sure I really need to see the 10/11 news team in the same screen dimensions as "Lawrence of Arabia.")

However, on CNN's election coverage Tuesday night, the network unveiled a frightening step in their all-out (albeit news gathering-centric) arms race with the other 13 broadcast and cable American news outlets.

Holograms.

Yep, kids, the technology that allowed Princess Leia to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away has made its way to our present world; all the way, in fact, to the corridors of CNN Center, to be utilized by the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper in interviews that, sadly, did not deal with trade routes to Alderaan, the disputes over the far-reaching effects of being frozen in carbonite, or who was directly to blame for the recent "Clone Wars" feature film.

That CNN had developed this technology to a practical level should not be seen as a surprise move by the top-rated cable network, as they have had Darth Vader anonymously (and sort of cheerfully) intoning their slogan for more than a decade.

Not to be outdone, however, NBC unleashed their own new technology -- a "holodeck," which was apparently on-loan from the Starship Enterprise via ancient Greece. But instead of allowing NBC's news and analysis team the chance to experience fun and potentially life-threatening adventures with favorite fictional characters famed in story and song, it only displayed minutiae regarding the 2008 election cycle, such as exit polling results or county-by-county vote projections.

In its defense, the simulator also did not lock up as frequently as Enterprise's, nor did it become sentient and demand to host a fifth hour of "Today," and, perhaps most notably, it certainly did not trap anchor Brian Williams in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse against a random sampling of likely Ohio voters -- at least not during primetime.

The other major news outlets unfortunately lagged behind; budget-conscious ABC, for example, was reduced to using such obsolete tech as laptop computers, ten-foot wide touch-screen monitors, and three Times Square video screens to deliver results to the nation.

Perhaps this low-tech, folksy approach is why ABC ended up being the most watched of all the outlets during primetime, with an average of over 13 million viewers over the three hours. CNN, the most watched cable source, finished in second place overall, which indicates that there is a burgeoning audience for large-scale election reporting technology breakthroughs.

So what's on the horizon? Will NBC perhaps perfect the fabled "flux capacitor," allowing election result delivery that doesn't take up hours of prime broadcast real estate that could be filled with more "Deal or No Deal?" Will CBS finally complete their rumored "warp drive," or is the processing of dilithium crystals to more accurately project tendencies among voters over 50 in Florida merely a beautiful dream?

Or will Fox News surpass all of their competitors, and scale to new heights of fair and balanced election coverage, thanks to their factory-rebuilt HAL 9000?

All good questions, all soon to be answered, as coverage of the road to Election Night 2012 commences -- which, in all likelihood, will be sometime next week.

Give or take a couple days.