Films like Tron have a lot to answer for … Children see these worlds, and the men and women they become try to build them.

Will Wiles posting on Spillway

For most of my life the videophone was telecom’s holy grail, & now? Just another of the Net’s many afterthoughts, & a B-teamer at that..

Julian Dibbell, on Twitter

photo credit: Jana Mills

Julian is right. When it was on its way video-conferencing felt very futuristic but then it got here and failed to take hold.

Which got me thinking. What other synecdoches for the future turned out to be duds on arrival? What other advances drove our imagination, only to fall short of where we thought they might lead? Two leapt to mind.

Chess-playing computers. People have been trying to make machines that play chess since 1769. Cybernetic pioneer Norbert Wiener and computer pioneer Alan Turing each devoted time to the problem. It was seen as an important branch of AI research. And then Deep Blue beat Kasparov and now Deep Fritz’ win against Kramnik is barely mentioned in Wikipedia. And we still don’t have talking robots.

Orbital space stations. The docking scene in 2001 is how the film tells you that it’s an advanced future. Well, we’ve had people in space continuously for 9 years. This has had far less impact on your life than one might have hoped.

A Contest

There are more, I know it. I’d like your help in finding them.

So I’m running a micrononfiction contest. Send in your 100-word-or-less nominations for miracles that didn’t quite make it. There are prizes and everything. Click here for all the details.

This should be fun.

Update: To be clear, don’t post your ideas here. Instead check out the details over here which tells you where to send your entry. Remember! Quality of writing also counts!

Update 2: The contest is closed and we’ve announced the results. See below!

All of: B-List Holy Grails