"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are hereby instructed to ignore all technological innovations of the past 25 years. In fact, ignore everything newer than the rotary phone. No, wait, make that the telegraph. Or the printing press. Scrolls and parchment? We hereby ban goose quills. Do any of you know how to read? If so, you are now excused."

Pretty stupid, eh? But that's where we could be headed. According to a story in Tuesday's New York Times, a judge in a federal drug trial declared a mistrial last week after he learned that .

"We were stunned," said the defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he was on the verge of winning the case. "It's the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head."

The juror who'd originally told Judge William J. Zloch she'd been guilty of Googling had discovered information about the case Zloch had specifically excluded. When he found out eight others had done the same thing, he 86'd the entire trial, eight weeks in.

(My question is, what was wrong with the other three jurors?)