A Prius in Every Garage
I, Cringely

In case you don't remember, the U.S. Government came up with the idea of wiring first schools and then homes, primarily with fiber, with the goal of bringing high-bandwidth communication everywhere. The mechanism by which this was to have been accomplished was by encouraging through tax credits for telephone companies to upgrade their networks and by imposing a tax on telephone users to support the wiring of schools.

It didn't work.

I love Robert Cringely's columns because he's been around long enough and paid enough attention that he actually knows what he's talking about. So I'll probably end up posting a link to every one of his columns here. This one's been sitting in my drafts queue for a while, and I know there's a newer one I'll link to.