"I plead guilty to being one of the spokespersons for the fanciful things wireless technology promised," said Dennis Roberson, chief technology officer of Motorola.
Fanciful items of technology supplied their every need including machines that produced toast and custard and a cheerful blue vacuum cleaner that kept their home spotless.
There were the market gurus talking up stocks and options and fanciful derivatives, and technology gurus preaching revolution in fat magazines like Wired, Red Herring and the Industry Standard.
Once known for producing durable, inexpensive machinery, and more recently for fanciful visions of future technology, Toyota is again courting the youth vote with a voluptuous concept that may evangelise better than its brand custodians ever could.
Tyson, an MIT-trained engineer, switched the name to just PRI and nixed the use of the word "robot," saying the science-fiction-sounding term made the technology seem too fanciful.
Although the technology described may sound fanciful, Google has been testing a fleet of driverless cars for several years.
On the atomic scale, however, teleportation of a sort has already been achieved that could lead to less-fanciful, though still impressive, technologies, such as quantum computers.
Officially, the N.R.A. does not oppose the development of smart-gun technology, but it frames the idea as fanciful or dangerous.
