You know that nearly all of us computer geeks are also Trekkies (or, if you're so inclined, Trekkers). My personal favorite is Star Trek:TOS (Star Trek The Original Series) followed by Voyager. I just love Kate Mulgrew!

And if you know me personally, you know that I absolutely abhor driving. And lately, as I get older, I'm just not all that big of a fan of traveling, period. The inverse co-efficient of patience for nonsense and a low tolerance for foolishness as I age, I suppose.

So, I was very disappointed to read in Scientific American that we're still no where near having reliable transporter technology. Well, really any kind of transporter technology for that matter.

From the article:

Scientific American: What's the biggest misconception about teleportation?
Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state—a wave function—from one place to another.

Apparently, our current research into quantum teleportation doesn't have much to do with the kind of transporter we'd all probably like to have. But it is kind of interesting research. As the author of the article summarizes it, quantum transportation has more to do with computing than with commuting.