30 year anniversary of the AT&T commercials that predicted the future(quite well).

[Special K]

I was watching an interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson talking about how hard it is to predict what will happen 30 years in the future, and it got me thinking of these AT&T commercials that had Tom Selleck as the voice-over talking about the things we will have in the future. I looked them up on Youtube, and sure enough the commercials were from 1993...30 years ago, and were quite accurate, describing Zoom meetings, GPS in cars, Netflix, FaceTime calls, being able to turn on the lights in your home/lock your doors when you aren't at home, etc.

 

It's an interesting watch:

 

 

[WhoTom]

Pretty spot on, except for the phone booth part. That's strange, because they correctly predicted sending a fax from the beach using a tablet.

 

[Warcodered]

1 hour ago, WhoTom said:

Pretty spot on, except for the phone booth part. That's strange, because they correctly predicted sending a fax from the beach using a tablet.

 

Also kind of weird to predict phone calls on your wrist and phonebooths still being a thing, they just don't line up.

[Special K]

2 hours ago, WhoTom said:

Pretty spot on, except for the phone booth part. That's strange, because they correctly predicted sending a fax from the beach using a tablet.

 

 

In 1993, who could have ever thought that the internet would become what it is today....when they said buy tickets/renew your drivers license from a cash machine or tuck in your baby from a phone booth, just replace cash machine and phone booth with “on the internet”, and they got it right. 

[Nextmanup]

3 hours ago, Special K said:

 

In 1993, who could have ever thought that the internet would become what it is today....when they said buy tickets/renew your drivers license from a cash machine or tuck in your baby from a phone booth, just replace cash machine and phone booth with “on the internet”, and they got it right. 

I can still remember in the very early days of the internet, big companies would offer financial incentives of some type if you did business with them through the website instead of traditional channels.

It was like they were forcing people to explore this new medium.

 

I can remember looking at a lot of websites in the '90s and thinking "What is the point of this? There's nothing really here."

 

 

 

[LeGOATski]

I think all of these ideas were pretty common in sci-fi literature by this time.

[davefan66]

Those ads are pretty Simpsons-esque. Predicted the (not so far) future of some things and how they’d look.

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

64-65 NYC World's Fair was showing how someday you would be able to see the person you were calling.

The Future ain't what it used to be.  I am still waiting for personal jet packs and helicopters.

[K-9]

4 hours ago, Ridgewaycynic2013 said:

64-65 NYC World's Fair was showing how someday you would be able to see the person you were calling.

The Future ain't what it used to be.  I am still waiting for personal jet packs and helicopters.

It’s interesting that the technologies for all those things predicted in 1993 were already being developed and used. Does anyone remember the AT&T VideoPhone 2500? That came out in 1992. Companies were heavily investing in the infrastructure required to offer up the first generation of these products for mass consumption. And none of it took 30 years to get here. 

[ArdmoreRyno]

They missed one part... 

 

[Wacka]

The internet  was already up and working then. In 1992, it was mostly text then. Was using an early version of Netscape Navigator and was reading about the 94 winter olympics and clicked on  Nancy Kerrigan's name (was a  blue link- they all were blue then) up comes a picture of her. I was amazed.

My god, Tonya Harding whacking her was almost 30 years ago!

Edited February 17, 2023 by Wacka

[DrDawkinstein]

4 hours ago, ArdmoreRyno said:

They missed one part... 

 

 

Things dont change much

 

[ArdmoreRyno]

4 minutes ago, DrDawkinstein said:

 

Things dont change much

 

 

But they didn't read the paper for 7-8 hours a day (like we do with our phones).