Picturephone and the Information Age: The Social Meaning of Failure

One of the proudest achievements of Bell Telephone Laboratories in the post World War II era, the video telephone system Picturephone ended its brief life as the Labs' biggest flop. Accounts have attempted to explain this "failure" in a variety of ways. This article proposes a new approach that questions the usefulness of the categories success and failure, and instead considers Picturephone as part of a technological narrative that directed both innovators and users along a certain path or trajectory of information technology. In the end, Picturephone may have actually reinforced this path, even though the device disappeared from use. Understanding these resonate meanings and effects requires extending the time frame of innovation and problematizing notions of consumer autonomy.