Growing up in the era of The Jetsons and Inspector Gadget, science columnists had high hopes for the 21st Century and the promises of technology. So what, to you, is the biggest letdown of science so far?

Video game developers have yet to develop a video game system that can swallow you into a virtual reality. If would probably just require simple interference with brain waves and an invasion into the brain's occipital lobe or a brain chip. Controversial maybe, but until China decides it wants even more control over American youth, I'll have to keep getting caught up in day dreams during comm class. - JT

As a recent graduate school interviewee, my biggest disappointment with life science was finding out that one of the most highly ranked individuals in a prestigious institution was the most antisocial person I had ever met. What is the benefit of science when its beholder cannot maintain a 30-second discussion with a potential scientist? Even worse, what is the fate of next-generation science when some of the best principal investigators are the worst classroom instructors? It might seem logical to hire a highly cited researcher to run a laboratory, but it takes more than putting a manuscript together to teach a course. - AJ

Decent Artificial Intelligence. It has been 13 years since Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess, and we were supposed to have HAL 9000 at least by 2001. Instead we're stuck with a bunch of ineffectual video game allies that can't navigate foot high rubble. - CT

While scientists have yet to get me a Na'vi doppelganger, I'll cut them some slack since Avatar only just came out. Electric cars, on the other hand, have stalked climate-conscious consumers like ghosts for decades. Where is my plug-in vehicle? - CB

More accurate meteorology. Humans have been watching the weather since at least the time of Aristotle, and yet according to one New York Times blog post many TV stations would have a better rate of accuracy if instead of varying their forecasts, they never predicted precipitation. The study wasn’t conducted in Ithaca. - TM

Although our nation's politicians love to pane across green fields of wind turbines in campaign ads, from 2004 to 2008, renewable energy use increased only a paltry 1.0 percent to 7.3 percent in 2008 (U.S. Energy Information Administration). The application of science and technology has been disappointing, but there is also room for improvement in science. Solar productivity has increased very little. - JJ

What do you think?