The Future! (in the 1990's)

[Justin Northwood]

So, the other day, I randomly remembered that there were some weird AT&T commercials back in the early 90's that were all about future (at the time) technologies.  From what I could remember, they seemed pretty accurate, then I found this article and video of the original commercials.  Some things are more or less dead-on, if not just a tad different. Remember, these commercials were made nearly 17 years ago when NONE of the things they are talking about existed, and there was no mainstream consumer internet.

Read the Full Article

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/TZb0avfQme8" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/TZb0avfQme8</a>

[Becca]

Yep, I remember those commercials. And I remember the launch of the World Wide Web, aproximately 8 years after the first time I accessed the internet. There was consumer internet, though calling it mainstream probably would have been a stretch. Instead it was like little islands of internet, Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, I know there was another one but I can't remember the name right now. I had AOL and used it to play Pern Moos and look up stuff on AOL's Encyclopedia Britianica. And then there was that one BBS server I'd call into to chat with friends, on the 1200bps modem. Gah that thing was slow!

[Torvald Magnusson]

I can't even tell you how many BBS's and MU* environments I helped build back then. Wow was it that long ago?

[Derek Giles]

I was 12 when I started pounding the keyboard with 'me2's and 'u r lame's in AOL chats. Okay, so I'm young, but whatever...my first computer was a Tandy. Still my claim to 'ancient' tech.

[Justin Northwood]

Yes, it really has been that long, looking at the commercials, as accurate as they are, you can see where things took different directions.  Ironically, for an AT&T commercial, there's no mention of wireless phones.  CRT monitors vs flat screens/LCD (in some), the notion that sending a fax from a tablet PC would be relevant, etc.  The notion of Video on Demand and the kind of tv they're watching it on is really kind of accurate.  As the article points out too, there is no mention of "the internet" itself, just references to the things that we now know are possible because of the internet/cavernous data pipelines.

[Justin Northwood]

... and onboard/handheld GPS?  Who wouldda thunk it?

[Arianna_Fireau]

I was born in 1990 :-P I  grew up with this stuff.

*makes you all feel old*

[Taweret]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJXn13-bTlU&feature=related