When Veronique Greenwood went to college in 2004, she took a laptop with her … and a videophone. In an engaging essay at Aeon Magazine, Greenwood writes about what it was like to grow up with a Futurist for a mom, particularly a futurist who, in retrospect, seemed to be more interested in premature technologies than in the sleek, widely adopted versions that eventually succeeded in the marketplace. Greenwood’s mother loved the videophone. When Skype came along, free of dedicated hardware, she lost interest.