THE promise of personal computing in business is great. In partial fulfillment of that promise, word processing and spreadsheets have become not only accepted professional implements, but tools upon which everyday commerce depends. Other modern electronic applications, however, seem to have had a more difficult time establishing their credentials.

Among these other applications are teletext, videotex and electronic mail. Of these, the first two are to all intents and purposes moribund, while the last appears to be suffering from far slower growth than that predicted for it by its proponents. The reason for that lack of progress is that in each instance the technological achievement far exceeds the consumer demand.

Consider teletext, the most primitive of the three applications. Teletext is the continuous transmission of information to a television set. The data signals are transmitted during the ordinarily unused blanking intervals that separate the lines that make up broadcast video images.

The effect is roughly analogous to looking through a window with venetian blinds when the blinds are down but open. One sees the vista outside, while the slats of the blinds themselves never register. In teletext transmission, it is these slats, so to speak, that carry the text signals - though the text usually appears as a narrow band at the bottom of the screen. The consumer, using a special decoder, may switch from the football game to a text release of the latest weather report or a flash report on the fighting in Beirut.

Companies are spending millions of dollars on teletext projects, funds that would have been far more profitably deployed had they simply been parked in a bank account earning interest. The fact is that the consumer is going to pursue the football game. Teletext is turning out to be information overkill.

The one exception to this superfluity occurs when the application is directed toward the hearing impaired. The technology of teletext had its origins in the transmission of closed- caption text concurrently with a regular television program so that the narrative could be read as well as heard. This is an admirable application, and the only one for teletext with any enduring qualities so far.

Videotex is quite different because it is interactive. A two-way system, videotex allows the user to choose the information or task that he or she wishes to pursue. Originally the choice was made by means of a dedicated videotex terminal or a special keyboard used in conjunction with the standard television set. Both methods involved inducing the consumers to spend a lot of money for something they didn't really want, and both have failed. Within the last year or so, the proponents of videotex have begun to shift their emphasis to the world of personal computing. This marketing tack is intended to popularize the services - and, not incidentally, give home computers a reason for their existence.


This is a nation of tire kickers, after all. I can't help but shake my head at the millions of dollars being spent on the development of videotex applications by companies that simply do not seem to grasp the fundamental tenets of personal computing. Personal computing is timesaving, money saving and fun. Videotex is none of the above. ''There have been a lot of very high expectations for information services that have not been met by either teletext or videotex,'' says Michelle Preston, the technology industry analyst at the investment firm of L. F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin. ''They simply do not offer enough value to really take off.''




In addition, electronic mail faces the problem of compatibility that has plagued the entire personal computer industry since its inception. At the moment, there are about a dozen services, among them MCI Mail, Western Union's EasyLink, the ITT Corporation's Dialcom and General Electric's Quick-Comm - none of which can be linked with any of the others.


The problem is compounded by the fact that there is no e-mail central. Nor is there any universal directory of subscribers to the different services to help a business determine which potential recipient of its electronic letter subscribes to which service. For now, electronic mail's solution to the dilemma seems to be the hybrid half e-mail, half regular mail represented by MCI's now familiar orange envelopes.
