History Were They Right?
posted by on August 2 at 9:22 AM
In 1993, AT&T tried to predict/sell the future with its “You Will” ads.
I hated those commercials at the time, and I used to drive my friends crazy by announcing (every time one came one) things like: “Have you ever tried to end history by resolving into self consciousness? You will.”
Anyway, the commercials aren’t as annoying to watch today. Even kind of interesting:
courtesy Paleo-Future.com
Is that Thomas Magnum talking?
So yeah, all of those things have happened, but the company that brought them to us, was not AT&T.
God I hate telecoms.
"tucked your baby in from a phone booth"? What's a phone booth?
Totally weird. I was having a conversation just yesterday about these ads and how they're freakishly right-on. Get out of my head, Feit.
The Video-Phone is probably the most-predicted gizmo of the future, going back to at least the late Fifties. Yet it never quite seems to happen.
@6,
That spot in the ads with the phone booth/video phone looks just like the scene in 2001 when the guy calls home from the space station (and talks to Kubrik's daughter on vid screen). I even think there's an AT&T logo on the screen.
Yep, it's Magnum.
I still have to agree with #3--what's as interesting is what won't be around in the future (Pan-Am was gone by 2001, phone booths are an endangered species today...)
Why, the youth of today have never even huffed mimeograph fluid. The shame!
Yes. It's pretty much all happened. And the company once known as AT&T had its share in letting it happen. But since that company ceased to exist, they were very wrong about "the company that will bring it to you...".
If they'd have said it would be "a startup in Silicon Valley" or in "Seattle" or even, "Bell Atlantic" or "GTE" (now Verizon) or "Southwestern Bell" (now AT&T), they'd have been closer to what actually happened.
Still... Better than the kinds of predictions made at things like Seattle's "Century 21" Expo in the 60s.
The phone booth scene looks like it was a clip from Blade Runner.
At the time, did any of those predictions seem outlandish, or were they just gizmos already on the horizon? I can't remember. Who made this thing Rasputin!
@5
The reason that the video phone has not become popular, despite its viability and application is that people don't favor looking at each other while on the phone. Study after study finds this to be true.
Kinda interesting to me.
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