And yet, while 90's (and earlier) TV was talking breathlessly about video communication, it feels like it just "snuck in" to our daily lives when webcams and e.g. Skype became mainstream, and it never felt magical. Of course, the demos were tightly scripted and stifled.

The Jupiter Ace was unreal, but only from a computer science perspective. You had to know a lot to know how to program Forth which was the fundamental language of that white but Spectrum-looking dish of a PC, in spite of a manual that read like HGTTG. Critically, it didn't reward you from the start of your programming journey like Logo or Basic did, and didn't have the games of the ZX Spectrum. I knew a person who tried to import and sell them in Australia. When I was young, he gave me one for free as the business had failed. RIP IM, and thanks for the unit!

https://80sheaven.com/jupiter-ace-computer/

Second Edition Manual: https://jupiter-ace.co.uk/downloads/JA-Manual-Second-Edition...

The Transputer as an implementation has failed, but all modern server/workstation CPUs have followed the Transputer model of organizing the CPU interfaces, starting with some later models of the DEC Alpha, followed by AMD Athlon and then by all others.

Unlike the contemporaneous CPUs and many later CPUs (which used buses), the Transputer had 3 main interfaces: a memory interface connecting memory to the internal memory controller, a peripheral interface and a communication interface for other CPUs.

The same is true for the modern server/workstation CPUs, which have a DRAM memory interface, PCIe for peripherals and a proprietary communication interface for the inter-socket links.

By inheriting designers from DEC Alpha, AMD has adopted this interface organization early (initially using variants of HyperTransport for peripherals and for inter-CPU communication), while Intel, like always, has been the last in adopting it, but they were forced to do this eventually (in Nehalem, i.e. a decade after AMD), because their obsolete server CPU interfaces reduced too much the performance.

>There are loads of branches in computing history that are off-trajectory in retrospect, inasmuch as there can be said to be a trajectory at all.

Vectrex. Jaz drives. MiniDisc. 8-track. CB Radio.

The more I notice, the less I feel there is a discussion to be had over this distinction.

The sci-fi predictions all came true - many of them, also came to pass, which is to say that the weight of the accomplishment of speculation to reality becomes immediately irrelevant in the context of the replacing technology.

Star Treks' communicators did catch on - among the content creation segment - but on the other hand, we also got the 'babelfish'-like reality of EarPods ..

I think the never-ending march of technology becomes fantastic at first, but mundane and banal the moment another fantasy is realised.