If you rely on science fiction to predict the technologies of the future, you may go wrong sometimes.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I remember my father telling me that in the future, everyone would have video phones in their homes. I thought about that with wonder. Indeed, science fiction backed up my Dad’s assertion: video phones were a staple of most science fiction movies.

But fast-forward to 2011, and most people don’t, in fact, have video phones in their homes. While video conferencing has become an important business application to cut down on travel and expenses and increase productivity, it’s never really caught on among consumers. Yes, I know many of us have the ability to use video calling on our smartphones or tablet computers, or PCs and laptops with built-in Web cams. But the percentage of people who choose to use these video enhancements is still pretty small.

Why? Think about it. Remember the scene in “Aliens” when Sigourney Weaver’s character, Ripley, after changing her mind about joining the mission, initiates a video call to Paul Reiser’s character in the middle of the night? Both parties are wearing their underwear, rumpled and sleepy looking. When most people are home in relax mode, are they looking to broadcast their relaxed appearance to strangers, acquaintances and even close friends and family?

Not hardly, particularly when a voice call will do just as well. So this is an area in which sci-fi writers and futurists (not to mention my Dad) truly missed. While the technology has been there for years, it would seem the general public just isn’t that interested.

This isn’t to say that science fiction seldom gets it right, because it frequently does just that. The Grand Master of “possible” science fiction (as opposed to fantastical science fiction) is Arthur C. Clarke, who foresaw a number of technologies, including satellite communications, e-mail, fax machines and even cloud computing, long before they became reality.

StarTrek certainly got it right when it envisioned, over 40 years ago, people communicating using hand-held “flip open” devices that even accommodated video. We’ve got these “communicators” in today’s cell phones and smart phones. (You may have to wait a little longer for the warp drive though.)

In some cases, really far-out technology we first heard about decades ago between the pages of science fiction books – things such as anti-gravity and matter/antimatter annihilation drives – are starting to attract real scientists who are trying to determine whether these technologies could be within humanity’s near reach.

So it makes sense that some technology companies have decided that, since it’s in their best interest to be able to predict future technological needs and preferences for both the near- and long-term, science fiction writers could be mighty useful.

Once such company is Intel which (for starters) employs an individual whose title is “Resident Futurist.” The chip maker has announced that it plans to hire some science fiction writers to help them feel their way forward in the consumer technology market, reports the Inquisitr. This follows on the heels of the company’s experiment of last year in which it hired four science fiction writers to look at Intel’s (News - Alert) research projects and then write about how those technologies could be used in the near future. The end product, an anthology called The Tomorrow Project was meant to help drive the direction of Intel’s design of those technologies, reported the Inquisitr.

There’s no word yet on how many sci-fi writers the company plans to hire, or which writers it has its eyes on. Here’s a thought, Intel: Ray Bradbury is still living, though he will be 91 next week. Best get busy.

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