Teleportation: will it ever be a possibility?

Instant travel seems further away than when Captain Kirk first reanimated, but scientists are fighting to make it happen

Star Trek has a lot to answer for. Not content to tease us with unreasonable expectations of phasers and warp drive, it also thrust into the popular imagination the idea of teleportation, in which we step into a giant scanner of some sort and instantaneously find ourselves somewhere else, mind, body and soul intact (and hopefully, unlike Jeff Goldblum, untainted).

Theoretically, there are really only two ways this can('t) be done - physical deconstruction at x and reconstitution at y, or the translation of one's person into data to be transmitted, then reconverted into matter, like some organic fax machine.