Fascinating to see what AT&T thought the future would be like. I think most everything in those commercials has come true.
Some comments about the predictions though:
I think medical records are still pretty proprietary so you wouldn’t be carrying those in your wallet.
-“Sending a fax from the beach”. How the hell would I do that from my tablet through a Wifi connection? Hrmm… there are websites which offer fax services so I guess you could use those.
-Though the technology exists, seems like voice commands for common household tasks never really caught on.
I wonder what the “You Will” ad for 2009 would say?
USB thumbdrive with emergency info/medical records.
Not sure how much it might help in the ER beyond allergies and conditions that would be on a MedicAlert tag.
Good god, I remember those commercials when they first aired. Has it really been almost 17 years?
While the predictions are close enough, some of them are pretty amusing in the representation. Like those huge CRT monitors. And a video phone booth? Who faxes anything anymore? I’m not so sure AT&T had much to do with some of those, either.
WOW! I was in an AT&T commercial in 1990. I looked for it, but I guess it wasn’t interesting enough for You Tube.
I still have the tape they sent me. I was paid $47,000 over 2 years.
I wore a green sweater standing in front of a yellow building. My hair was red and short. I said, “I’ve always used AT&T because it’s always been easy.”
I’ve just seen these again because I was watching episodes of MST3K that I’d taped back then. The Voice of Tom Selleck telling me what wonders the Phone Company is going to provide.
well, some of them were quite accurate. Too bad they couldn’t have predicted the future of the Phone Company itself with such accuracy. Since they made those ads Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ has gone. And GTE Labs in Waltham, MA is now Verizon, and doesn’t do the research it used to.
Video phones! I remember when I was a little kid in the 90’s, we were all certain these would be everywhere. Why didn’t they become the big thing everyone thought they would be? We definitely have the technology.
I think video phones are a nice concept but for the most part they’re not practical. For cell phones, people still want to be able to multitask while they’re having a phone conversation. When at home, you have the option of using your webcam to do the video thing.
I have a Life magazine from 1984 (*The Beatles in America *issue) that has a 2-page AT&T advertisement. It has the tag line “AT&T IS REACHING OUT IN NEW DIRECTIONS”. In the ad they brag about mass-producing the first 256K memory chip.
I would but I don’t know how! Also, I don’t have the equipment to convert VHS to… whatever I’d have to convert it to. I’m old, and lucky I can get on the 'net.:rolleyes:
That’s actually the first thing that came to my mind when I watched this! Besides the first thought of “AT&T can’t possibly do ALL of these things”, that’s almost scarily accurate of today’s world.
Videoconferencing can be useful - at work or school - but you have to set it up for multiple participants at each location as well as visuals.
The picturephone concept was always one-face-to-one-face, which was its major failure. Same with the early attempts at TV, although the phone people apparently didn’t know/care - perhaps because Bell Labs had been involved in TV back then and wasn’t anxious to own up to it years later.
Also, I don’t have the equipment to convert VHS to… whatever I’d have to convert it to. I’m old, and lucky I can get on the 'net.:rolleyes: