Formica = electrical insulator
Gold = electrical conductor
Dougie (and maybe the black box?) shrinks down to bits of gold-colored metal.
On an unrelated note, something was mentioned in the podcast that has been bothering me. The woman does not text "ARGENT 2". SMS messages have a 160 character limit, and she has typed one character: "2". This reduces the remaining characters available to 159, as noted at the top right of the Blackberry screen. "ARGENT" is the contact she is sending the message to, which is linked directly to Argentina when we are shown the black box. Which blinks twice.