Linux Magazine: 2005: A Skype Odyssey

“Almost exactly four years ago, in my January 2001 column for
Linux Magazine I wrote a rather long diatribe about how many
predictions in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (based on
the novel by Arthur C. Clarke) have been left unfulfilled.

“Among those was the common use of videophones, used in a
visually dramatic scene where Dr. Heywood Floyd, a senior
government official representing the United States space agency,
calls from the space station to wish his daughter to wish her a
happy birthday. At the end of the call, Floyd is charged $1.70, an
obscenely inflated amount by 1968 standards ($1.70 back then would
have bought you five gallons of gasoline), but only a modest amount
today, especially for a long-distance pay phone call…”

Complete
Story