"Pioneers in a new kind of communication"—that's what Bell System offered to turn visitors into at the 1964 World's Fair in New York, where the company unveiled the first consumer-ready videophone. Amid such exhibits as DuPont's musical tribute to the wonders of chemistry, attendees lined up to use the Picturephone to talk to callers in California who'd queued up at a booth in Disneyland. But that pioneering bit of technology never caught on: Placing a call required reserving time at a public booth, and forget roaming charges—a 15-minute call cost nearly $900 in today's terms.

This month, it's westward ho for technology buffs attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. In his 2007 Macworld keynote address, Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs promised to "reinvent the phone" and unveiled—to a soundtrack of John Mayer and Green Day—the iPhone. This year, all eyes and ears have moved back through the alphabet a couple of letters, intrigued by the prospect of a "gPhone." With Google's announcement that it will create a software platform for cell phones, people in all facets of the industry are frantically trying to monetize the possibilities. Likely bells and whistles at January’s shows are on-the-go video downloading, mobile TV, and countless applications that blend G.P.S. with social networking.

Bell's Picturephone was a flop in the 1960s, and subsequent efforts to revive video calling have also pancaked. Even with the latest technology, no major U.S. wireless carrier offers the service, so Nokia's new N95 model, which can make video calls in Europe, can't make them here. "Is it something that the masses are calling out for? Clearly no," says Joseph Farren, an industry spokesman. While the videophone remains a mainstay of sci-fi classics, today's communication pioneers seem more interested in seeing Shrek on their handheld than they are in seeing Mom there.