This montage of AT&T ads came from a 1993 Newsweek CD-ROM, when Newsweek thought that one day, magazines would be sent to you in CD-ROM form, sponsored with ads. It's an interesting view of the future. (via very-appealing.com)
AT&T’s network enables all of these services, even if you’re not an AT&T customer, plus all of the current communication companies split off of AT&T when the government decided to split them up since they were a monopoly. Also, no one 25 years ago knew in the future they would always have a tablet or a smartphone with them... AT&T used a phone booth as an example to get the point of video calling across, since at the time phone booths were convenient and everywhere
We send documents all the time digitally, we just don't call it "faxing" anymore. Though yes, the death of phone booths was a thing. We all got cell phones.
@@TitaniumDragon Unfortunately some industries do still rely on faxes. For some reason. And they go through all sorts of ridiculous contortions to make it still actually work. But mostly I was joking about how kids wouldn't have any reference point for any of those things that many of us grew up with.
Wow, I remember watching these commercials when I was 12 and thinking "that's pretty futuristic." Now it's 2010 and most of these are just basic parts of life. The technologies in the end didn't exactly look like this, and ATT didn't spearhead the age of the internet either, yet the general concept of all these things (except for your home door opening to your voice) are reality today. In all, it's a fairly accurate prediction from 17 years ago.
To be fair, all of this stuff was already in the pipelines back then in very early phases, but they did do a very good job of including almost nothing that didn't happen. Ironically, the only really "wrong" thing was the phone booths, and not because of the video part - it's because phone booths are obsolete.
i just rewatched that part and its pretty amazing to see a widescreen flat panel tv in '93, watching it today it seems so "normal" but back then would be like sci fi
Nice collection of old commercials. It's amazing that many of these have actually come to pass, and others are in the wings. I'm looking forward to what we can accomplish in the next 10 years.
Love how virtually every one of these is now a reality (I recall watching these ads as a kid)...the only real detail they got wrong was that AT&T ended up having practically nothing to do with the ideas coming into fruition, LOL... See: Irony
They provided the wireless service. The kind of service that allowed other companies to develop all of these technologies on top of. People who can't grasp this implication shouldn't be allowed to use the word "irony". See: Irony, you dumbass.
I like how in the toll booth thing they still thought we'd have to swipe our credit cards while driving to pay instead of just having it connected. I love the "beep beep" of connivence my FastTrack makes when I drive across the bridge.
Well if you listen to ONE side... The world will be in chaos... Oceans will have risen several feet, there is no food, there's water shortages, pollution went rampant, and the U.S. is the target of every other nation. If you listen to the OTHER side... The U.S. will be the center of a movement that will get the world on its feet and begin the new age of technology with freedom and all at little cost. I know which one I'm hoping is right... :)
@@jeffreymontgomery7516 You mean the morons who killed a hundred thousand Americans by going into denial about a disease epidemic, and have made the world a much worse place? Yeah, that aged well. Also, FYI, it's the fake news networks that claim that people claim sea levels will rise several feet in 20 years. The present scientific projection is that we will see 0.6 to 2 meters of sea level rise by 2100 relative to 2000. Likewise, the "mass starvation" thing is bullshit; no one but the lunatic fringe claims that. Fake news networks try to claim that people "on the other side" make very outrageous claims on a regular basis to make themselves seem reasonable. The authoritarians like Trump, Putin, and Xi hate science and are completely in denial about reality. They need to be gone, along with all their supporters. Sadly, it's going to be a lot of work getting rid of all those people. The main reason why things get better is not magic, it's because people work to make a better tommorrow.
this is really great, seeing all this technology that now exists today. In a 1993 world, this commercial was skeptical. but now all of these wonderful inventions have been very common for many years!
The woman shown in the segment tucking in her baby at night via video phone was then unknown actress Jenna Elfman. She later went on to star in ABC's sitcom Dharma & Greg.
I haven't tucked in my baby from a phonebooth and sent a fax from beach.... But the fax thing is silly, since when someone at my workplace for some inexplicable reason asks to send a fax, all of us, Millennials, have no clue where our fax machine is located and how to operate it :D
I think even a lot of us Gen X'rs don't even know where our office fax machine anymore (assuming we still have one). Fax machines are so 90's. I can't even remember the last time I saw one of those so called 'phone booths'...hahaha
mikefly562 That's because you're carrying the phone booth in your pocket. Sure they were inexact with some unimportant details, but overall the commercials are spot on.
+Andris Jansons It seems silly now because we realized it makes more sense to keep it in digital form and print it off if the need arises, but that need is quickly dissipating.
Disregarding AT&T in this, whichever person or group of people was behind these ads did a more than amazing job of envisioning the future of tech in general. I wish somebody would hire them to do the same job looking forward today, because with the accuracy of their predictions back then, I would actually take their word for what they'd come up with. True imagineers. I salute you.
You have no idea how much I wish the 80s future was our present. My first laptop was an IBM ThinkPad 600e. It was a big, black box with the IBM logo in the corner and 256 megs of RAM. You have no idea how much I miss it. Silver is for duct tape. Bring back black!
+9HighFlyer9 And those were long gone by 1993, the ones I saw Sunday weren't protecting YOU from the elements, they were protecting the phone, which was long gone. 3 of them within half a mile all Bell.
+lkrnpk You ever want to see said Presidential candidate lose in a landslide of epic proportions? YOU WILL. And the country that will bring it to you...US of A. www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trump-unpopularity-20160401-story.html
It is really amazing that all these things were predicted and we basically use up to 13 (or 14, depending on who you ask) of these things every day now.
When these ads came out we thought they were soooo amazing. Now we do much of this without blinking an eye or marveling over the technology. It's sad how blase we are towards these everyday miracles.
These adds were feel good adds that relied on the consumer associating technological advance with AT&T. It is an unquestioned fact that it was after AT&T's monopoly on the phone system was broken, and other vendors came into the market, that real innovation occurred in an explosion of phone services, PBX systems, dial around long distance, nationwide fiber networks, and vastly cut long distance and international rates.
Gotta get one of those sweet fax pads! I also remember from this series of commercials they offered to go through the grocery store without having to check. Still waiting on that one. Hell, I'm still waiting on getting cell reception from my house! Come on AT&T...you can do it...little fella!!!
Great ads and it's so neat that they were pretty accurate in what you could do about 20 years later, except maybe for the video pay phones. Does anyone have that AT&T commercial from the same era, where two people were talking in sign language with video pay phones?
This was back in the 90s when ATT still had bell labs, inventing and researching cutting edge technology. ATT was not always the lame phone/internet company that we know it as today. They WERE the powerhouse research company. Bell labs invent the C language, UNIX and CDMA technology. RIP Bell Labs.
Remotely borrowing books-Kindle Not asking for directions-GPS Send a fax from the beach-PDAs and Email Pay toll without slowing down-EZ pass Concert tickets from cash machine-Ticketek online (an underexpectation!) Watch movies the minute you want to-On demand movies A phone booth video call isn't exactly vandal-proof. That's probably the main reason why they didn't take off. Plus, they got the plasma TV sizes quite spot on.
AT&T also made forays into computer hardware and even computer graphics software. I use an old program called RIO Professional that I use for graphic design projects. Its incredibly powerful and easy to use, and the same elegance that I see in other AT&T technologies I mentioned is present in RIO Pro. I win contests with it. Also, back in the 80's AT&T was known for having more top scientists working for it than any other organization. More Nobel winners and more top young researchers.
Reminds me of a movie I saw in highschool back in the 70's... it was called Future Shock... same scenario... we have all of that 'future's' technology today.
What's amazing is that every one of the technologies mentioned in these ads is part of todays world. I wonder how many patents the then AT&T held on this stuff and what the new at&t holds still. Of course AT&T completely missed the mark on quite a number of things but most of that was Bell Labs work. I lament the passing of Bell Labs from a pure research laboratory to a market driven laboratory.
0:06 - the internet 0:15 - the gps 0:20- the iphone (sort of) 0:35- almost there. 0:43- those fancy ticket booths in new york 0:53 1:22 - webcam 1:07 - Voice Command 1:38 - movies on demand (channel 1000)
In Dallas-Ft Worth, the TollTag allows you to drive right through toll plazas. Infact, State Highway121 doesn't even require TollTag, they take a pic of your license plate, then bill you a week later. 121 doesn't even have toll booths actually.
Well, they got most of it spot on. In order of appearance: eReaders, GPS Systems, Tablet PCs, Toll Passes, Ability to purchase tickets from Ticketmaster at stores, Video Calling, uncertain, uncertain, Video Conferences/Webcam, Netflix/Similar Services, Online Colleges. AT&T was more than likely in the know of what has come (damn I feel old at only 20), but it might have been in their best interest not to have made these commercials. Their competitors have bested them in some aspects. XD
"My God. I get it now. The world changes at a steady pace. This "future" we're looking for will never come, because we get used to the changes too quickly..." Actually the pace of change is accelerating. But you're right about the future never arriving, it will always be the present. An awesome, amazing present it will be though.
Those AT&T commercials was right on time. They pretty much informed the common man in America about how computers would change the way we do things. Years later laptops was sold for an arm and a leg and nobody knew how to use those slow low powered, short memory rip off's. Compuserve and AOL rained supreme with IBM commanding a huge chunk of market shares. Back in the day you need lots of skill sets just to open and send mail Thank god that period is over. Now what ? Social Media ? Peace
Kinda funny how they were ahead of their time with that idea. Wow, to think that only like 14 years ago that what we do today was only a concept that seemed like it would be totally awesome.
These ads bring a tear to my eye. We live in such incredible times. How the fuck is it that I can look up weather, the news, where to eat, get directions, and sports scores from my phone?? That I carry with me? That's not much bigger than a credit card. Oh, and it holds and plays all the music i've ever owned, and full-length movies and TV shows. I mean wtf.
@beachjungle3 No, not technically. But Stop & Shop has a handheld scanning device that you can use to scan the items as you put them in your cart (directly into a shopping bag). Then when you check out they download the data of what you scanned, pay and go, all without removing the items from your cart. It is a real time saver. The scanners also keep a running total of your items so it also helps with keeping food shopping within budget.
Remember AT&T of the 1990s was primarily a long distance and networking company, computing against MCI, Sprint, Cisco and others. MCI was cooking its books, so the competition was in many ways unfair. Cisco gear now handles a lot of the AT&T 'voice' traffic (it did 4 years ago, anyway). Once the long-distance subsidy ended, Bell Labs funding started to decline, or was pushed toward different priorities
A RU-vid first for me: Of the 10 comments displayed, all are well thought out and with a negligible amount of spelling/grammatical errors. Way to go, Internets!
i remember these ads back in around '93 and it's amazing how close to reality it's become in just 16 years. ....but computers aren't nearly as fast as they seem here. haha....well only if you build yourself a real nice one.
In response to many of the comments & having worked on these commercials I can confirm that 1. the voiceover is Tom Selleck, 2. they look like Bladerunner because the same art directors worked on it 3. AT&T was a different company and did develop all of those technologies, including Movies on Demand. btw the director was David Fincher
