Nearly every vision of the future contains video phones. You know, those devices that let you see who you're talking to. AT&T even tried marketing these doodads a few years back, and they were a tremendous flop. Now, I ask, why the hell would anyone ever want a videophone at home?

Think about most of the times that you answer the phone. You answer the phone in the morning, after you've woken up and before you've left for the day. That's just the perfect time you want someone to see you...when you're in some state of undress, perhaps haven't showered, haven't had your morning coffee (damn the morning people), and are likely to look like some B-movie monster. I can just imagine the phone calls. The phone rings, and then a perky face named Robin or Marlene says, "Hello, I'm calling from First Fiduciary National Bank and Trust. I'd like to tell you about our no-fee OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE? SHOULD I CALL THE POLICE?"

The rest of the time you're talking on the phone at home, you're not really paying attention to the person that's talking anyhow. Your mother calls, or maybe a coworker, and starts babbling about deadlines, and when you're going to come home next, and why haven't you settled down with a nice Jewish boy/girl/etc. Meanwhile, you're cooking dinner, surfing the web, clipping your toenails or just making funny faces at them. If you had a video phone, the other person could actually tell that you'd rather floss the cat than talk to them! The breakdown of human society as we know it would be imminent.

In fact, the only times video phones would be really useful are for business meetings, when you want to figure out if the other person is lying because their cheek twitches in just that way, or if you're a grandmother who wants to see the kids. Hardly worth the investment.

Well, I've left out one important niche. Phone sex. It's not really much for pay phone sex lines, because then you'd see that you were actually talking to some chain-smoking 50-year-old and not actually that busty teen in black lace, who's drooling over you every "Oh yeah" and "oooh baby". For sad relationship-less souls or those separated by distance from the ones they love, they'd steam up those little LCDs with their erotic frame-per-second fantasies. But, these people already have their fix, as Connectix was nice enough to make the QuickCams. (Man, I wish I could have heard the marketers trying to figure how to handle that one. I guess they just spun it as a toy for home photography. Candid photography. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say-no-more.)

AT&T gave up on their misguided video phones. The only current offerings are video-conferencing systems that businesses buy for a lot of money. Why can't fiction writers just get over it? Stop writing these useless devices into your stories just to seem futuristic. It doesn't work. It's stupid. Please, stop.