I had one of those miracles of modern technology moments recently and it reminded me of a fun family experience I had when I was 7-years-old, while also leading me to wonder why this particular modern marvel took so long to get here.

Last night, I talked to my mother back home in Iowa via Skype, the Internet video communications application. We chatted about each other's health (a common topic when you get older), the weather (it's sweltering in Iowa, too) and other vitally important subjects. I don't want to turn this into a commercial for Skype, but the video and audio qualities were good and the application was about as easy to use as advertised - a rarity these days.

Strangely, the call reminded me of something that happened way back in 1963. We all took a trip to Chicago to attend a cousin's wedding and made a family vacation out of it, with one of the highlights being a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry. For the uninitiated, that's sort of a big-city museum-y Epcot Center, and a must-see if you ever visit Chicago. The Windy City is home to some of the nation's truly great museums.

Anyway, at the museum back in 1963, I recall seeing the Car of Tomorrow (nuclear powered!), the House of Tomorrow, and the This, That and the Other of Tomorrow. That included the Telephone of the Future, which was, of course, a videophone. As I recall it, the exhibit consisted of two small booths on opposite sides of a room, with a person in one booth able to communicate with someone in the other booth via a grainy black-and-white closed circuit TV system and a rather hollow-sounding desk telephone (this was the early 60's, remember). Well, we all walked away from there being dutifully dazzled and expecting that video telephone communication was coming to everyone right around the corner. Yup, it'll happen any day now. Could be tomorrow.

So here I am, communicating with family members via Skype nearly half-a-century later. That was one lengthy right around the corner.

And while we're at it, where are those George Jetson rocketpacks we all expected to be zipping around in right about now? The nuclear-powered cars? The vacations on the moon?

Let's face it, the future ain't what it used to be.