We love our gadgets. But they treat us with an indifference that sometimes feels like contempt. They're like cats. But soon, they'll act more like dogs -- perceptive of how we feel, and reacting to our moods by joining in on our elation or treading lightly when we're angry. Here's what's coming.

Google's gazillionaire co-founder Sergey Brin said yesterday "we want Google to be the third half of your brain." But at the rate Google is going they'll soon form all three halves.

As you know, Google announced yesterday Google instant which predicts your search queries before you type them. Rather than having to construct an entire query all by yourself, you can now type a couple of letters and then choose from the options Google presents to you.

Google instant comes immediately after the launch of Google scribe, which is a kind of Google instant for writing, rather than search. It works inside online e-mail and browser-based applications like word processing applications.

Within a period of a couple of days, Google has replaced what for many may be the last creative act — the construction of search queries and the contrivance of phrases, sentences and paragraphs — with another process of selecting from available choices.

Mind you, I'm not blaming Google. In fact, it's refreshing to see the company innovating in a big way again. But I can't help wonder, given our dependence on Google and competitive products, if we'll get dumber as our online applications get smarter.

People are divided on the question of whether it's OK for employers to check the Facebook posts of employees or prospective employees. The majority, at least among my readers I've casually surveyed on the question, believe that Facebook posts are public, and therefore fair game for employers.

However, a Facebook post is not like a public blog post. Here's why.

A new survey of 600 teenagers from a company called Roiworld found that teenagers are starting to feel "Facebook fatigue." One in five use Facebook less than before, or not at all. 

And why wouldn't they? This isn't what they signed up for.

The truth is that Facebook has been taken over by parents, not teens. What started out as a college hook-up service has evolved into a way for middle aged people to share pictures of their kids with their old high school friends. It's also great as evidence in divorce court. I think today's teens will keep their accounts, and use them to keep up with relatives.

But I think teens are ready for something else -- something that does what Facebook used to do -- keep non peers out. They'll abandon Facebook like they abandoned MySpace. 

Prolonged viewing of 3D movies, games and other media by children 7 and under can permanently damage vision. A disorder called strabismus, or "lazy eye," can develop after a lot of 3D. 

Linda Stone wonders aloud in a new blog post how users can move beyond the tyrannical impulse to constantly maximize productivity. She suggests that the answer lies in tuning in to how we feel, and finding a way to embrace "Conscious Computing" as an alternative to brute-force methods of attention focus. In other words, rather than using productivity tools to force ourselves to pack more work into less time, we should rely more on intuition, self reflection and self awareness. 

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel have developed software that can tell whether a blogger is depressed by simply analyzing blog posts. The team has reportedly used the program, called Pedesis, to scan more than 300,000 English language blogs, and has developed lists of the 100 least and 100 most depressed bloggers in the world. 

Psychologists have reviewed the research and found a 78 percent correlation between their own findings and the software's results.

The upside of this research is that people with depression could be identified and helped. The downside is that such software could be used to screen job applicants -- which would really give eliminated bloggers something to be depressed about.