This 1995 Video Unveils What The Internet Might Become. Did it?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- I made this video for AT&T who was revealing in the video, a new relationship with its customers that involved the World Wide Web and the Internet. At the time, AT&T believed that it could "own" its customer relationships with the Internet or at least "host" (an AT&T term) every business on the Internet through its new web portal.
They called this experiment “True Experiences" and it was at the time, a vision and not a reality. In other words it was not yet ready to offer to customers. AT&T saw this video like the Apple video Knowledge Navigator that presented a vision for the future that was quite amazing.
At the time I was working with startups in Silicon Valley and the leaders who I worked with saw AT&T as an old east coast behemoth whose leadership had no sense of the changes that were going to hit them. Those leaders were correct. Years later the failing AT&T phone company sold itself to another large phone communications company.
Some parts of the vision unveiled in this video touched on what Google, RUclips, AI, and voice recognition among other software technology companies were developing. AT&T was also developing these technologies inside its laboratories. Being a East Coast company, it was not watching what the startups in Silicon Valley were creating. Their belief that they could either buy or at least control those startups was in my view, a fatal error.
You might ask where this video was presented. It was too long to be a TV commercial and there was no RUclips. The video was shown at conferences and primarily to AT&T employees and partners. The company felt that in order to succeed with this view of what was coming, they had to have their partners - hundreds of companies and key individuals - onboard.
Was it successful? The growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web was happening so fast that the world wind passed them by within a year or so of when this video was released. So I would have to say that it was not.
When I watch it today it is interesting how much of what the Bell Labs (a division of AT&T) scientists who created these technologies became real in some form or other.
If you found this 1995 video of interest, please click the Super Thanks button to the right below the video screen. That support keeps me going digging through my archive finding more videos for you and others to enjoy.
This video is like a child describing what they think life would be like as an adult.
This video reminds me how advancements can be a double edge sword. Here we see the potential benefits of new technology being showcased, yet in hindsight we understand that such conveniences come with a lot of negatives as well.
Family communication at the breakfast table - shown in the video being still healthy - is almost an unknown institution anymore, due to the excess of electronic means.
Overall it is a tragedy.
AT&T had a much larger role in improving the infrastructure of the internet, by rolling out fiber optics and 4G for example, than they did with directly changing the end-user experience with software like this. It was usually companies no one had ever heard of that made the most revolutionary and sudden changes, such as RUclips.
The AT&T that rolled out 4G is not the same company as I worked for when I made this video.
David Hoffman filmmaker
Wrong! Al Gore did this.
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker That makes sense, but no matter what era in the development of the internet we're talking about, I think AT&T contributed a lot more to the hardware and infrastructure rather than applications like in the video. For example, they didn't have much to do with creating protocols for streaming audio and later video, but they did have a hand in upgrading the infrastructure to the point that there was enough bandwidth and low enough packet loss to make such things possible. Their contributions weren't as obvious but were still very important.
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker Was that Alcatel Lucent?
The thing about stuff like RUclips is it took off due to things like infrastructure. Video on the internet was painful for 2 reasons when I was growing up in the 90s. Bandwidth obviously but the lack of browser support. You never knew what plugins a user had and solutions like real player and QuickTime we're a mess. Adobe got us through this period with Flash video. But thankfully browsers now support natively streaming a few formats.
Having developed as a teen I felt RUclips wasn't some brilliant out of nowhere idea. We all wanted this sort of solution to happen but funding, infrastructure and common plugin adoption were not something the average person with the idea was going to pull off. Someone did it at the right time and the rest is history.
The tone is so tranquil. When did crazy people take over?
Facebook and big tech. They're leftist nutjobs that have a castle on the hill complex. They're drunk with the power of information control.
When they realized how easy it is to overwhelm people's sensory spectrum with sound and fury signifying nothing.
Wow, this takes me back. As you know my wife worked at one of the AT&T midwest centers testing technology while still operating on "old" systems. What a mess.
At the same time I was blessed to have the news service I worked with --- relaying between local affiliates and networks --- innstall an at home studio where I could use the telephone line to send material. It was called entering the World Wide Web.
I was told it was just like using the AP or UPI services (both of which I was familiar) but without a big industrial dish.
Just log in, hear "bong, bong, sssssssssssssssssh" and it would connect. Then I could enter my reports.
Man, we've come a long way in less than three decades.
Thanks for sharng this David. Oh, and I do not miss those original systems. Ha, ha, ha.
I was a desk editor and reporter for the actual AP and UPI services in the ‘80s and ‘90s. We had crews of tech people strewn all over the place, some of whom were crusty and a bit grumpy. They seemed to know their life’s work was soon going to be replaced by something the size of a graham cracker that everyone would hold in their hands.
I remember the phone line modems. 😂
My fridge still looks like that. ☺ Thank you David as always for these!
1970s-style art masterpieces (kids)
Ah, life before social media.
It was so much better.
@@9852323 much more social
1995 is the year I graduated highschool and when my older brother got the internet for his apartment, lots of memories when the internet was fresh/new in the mid to late 1990s. Thanks for sharing David Hoffman..🙂🎥
In 1978 I was chosen to be the Field Administrator and I had to spend the next year as the main office operator for a very large offshore oil and gas field. I worked for the largest producer of natural gas in the US at the time. I had applied for a position with this company and I started off as a 'C' class operator. My job working in the engine room operating a 35,000 hp turbine engine. I transferred over from operating superheated steam driven turbines to gas fired turbine compressors. A Solar compressor usually was approximately 3,000 hp and there was always three turbines in a compressor station. As a maintenance technician I moved up pretty rapidly. When I went into the operations and records keeping of the field I was dropped in the maintenance dept. I think they saw that I was very good with numbers, calculations, and using factors to make up different ormulas for measring and recording production figures. When I finally got out of that position I was classed as a B class Lease Operator. At that time I had been thru compressor school in New Orleans and many other types of operational training. I could operate any offshore production platform in the Gulf of Mexico within the USGeological Survey law and operational safety guidelines. I never ran a platform in bypass like so many other fools did back then. That was a crazy time in the oilfield. I got fed up with working for this company because of internal politics. I left and went to work as an independent contractor. I was snatched up by a company and with 2 months of just being out in the field I was promoted to one of the 3 highest positions in the company. I was now a full fledged Offshore Production Foreman. That meant nothing had changed for me except that now I was responsible for anything taking place within my jurisdictional field. Everything stopped at my desk and I was responsible for all operations, production figures, sales, compliance issues, etc. The dept that was tasked for testing operations in every field went to the Minerals Management Services of the dept of the interior. They were supposedly the law as far as operational control of offshore leased tracks under the water. I would leave home about 20 miles from a regional airport and get in a company aircraft. A twin engined King Air would whisk myself and the two other prod foreman's to Galveston, Texas. There we each had a Bell 206 Long Ranger helicopter to use as we needed for our week offshore. I worked 7 days on and 7 days off. The plane would drop our relief foremen off to get on and fly us back to Galveston and then to home. This was a very hectic job and there was very little sleep to be had during the week offshore, when you are a squared away engineer you want your equipment to be 100% operational and always making gobs of revenue for the company. The nly way to do this is to make sure you have qualified and proven operators you can depend on. I eventually weeded out the weak and I had what I would say was one of the best compliance crews in the Gulf. And that is saying something. During all of my annual government inspections I only ever got one compliance ticket and it was repaired while the inspector continued testing.Since I had started using a form of a company report form I was using an IBM computer since 78, so that is how much practical computer useage I had been introduced to at before the advent of personal home computers; End!
Anything else?
I thought for sure that post was going to be a sales pitch for something to make us $125,000 a month, or whatever. I am glad to see it at least wasn’t some such spam.
@@cassidybb10lol
@@brianarbenz1329 I put out some coments in a story form or a rant. it's something that passes the time of an old man who still looks for some kind of adventure. I feel my whole life was a splendid adventure ans sometimes I will share a thought or story. I'm sorry if I threw you off for a little while. I don't want to cause any controversy.
No worries. Your info was interesting.
I graduated in 95. I think I saw people using internet for the first time that year in the university computer lab
1994 here, also at school. Pre windows 95. It was really slow just loading a page and hard to do anything without search engines being out.
You always present such good stories to us. We thank you for sharing. We didn't know the Jones' nor try to keep up with them. I still carried a pager and had to find a payphone lol. This was cool
It didn’t predict that technology/computers would be used for things like entertainment, wasting time, consumerism. It maybe gave human beings too much credit, thinking they would use computers for practical matters.
I would like to see a parody of commercials like this where someone makes what looks like a 90s commercial predicting the arrival of TikTok, 4chan, and Twitter.
About 1988, Isaac Asimov said children will be able to educate themselves without leaving their own bedrooms! Their own curiosity will guide them to become fully developed thinkers! Yeah. Right.
Archiving the analog era.
Thanks, Hoffman.
I first was introduced to the Prodigy internet service at a friends house in 1993. It was far more basic than what is presented here, but was a clear hint at where the internet was going. This AT&T presentation video is similar to both CompuServe and eWorld (an America Online-style port by Apple) from 1995-96. It was a fresh, exciting era for computer-based communications, yet this corporate video plays like the feel-good version of how internet/World Wide Web portals were intended to function at all times. It would have been more realistic if one of the family members had picked up the phone while online, broke the modem line connection, and caused the web browser to crash before the child could check for a traffic report. Great video! Thanks for sharing.
1995: Imagine the possibilities of the internet!
2022: Twitter
Need I say more?
Some people were dicks then and they are dicks now. You can present whatever you want by cherry-picking.
Wow, you’d think this were a real family; so much chemistry!
LOL
It is sad that the Family Dinner Scene at the end really Doesn't look that way Now. The kids would be too busy looking at their so called Ai Phone Devices.
It is a very idealized view of how computers would become a part of family connections. The reality is much less wholesome as everyone has their own phone.🖤🇨🇦
They sure pushed how they wanted it to blend right into the average contemporary family dynamic! For some reason that "knick knack" covered fridge door resonated with me more than anything! Lol😂 I'm pretty sure we were using "dial up" AOL around that time? It's so Interesting to watch this footage in 2022! Thank You David! ✌
Dial up at low speeds. 56k modems weren't out iirc. Broadband is from about 2005.
@@jc.1191 the dial up aol time frame I was referring to was around 1995, but it may have been 96 through 99, but no later!
@@JWF99 I think aol was dead after about 2000 or 2001.
@@jc.1191 for sure, I only remember having it for a short time anyway👍
I like how the wife is about 28 and the husband is 53
feels so old but yet so new to my generation
"What can we do to help you today?" The 1990s internet was better because of this attitude alone.
I'm only in my 30s but it's already a night and day difference. Now every ounce of strength they have is put into how they can abuse their customers for profit. It was better before Facebook.
The future in 56kbs
90's was a time in which smart people would go on the internet, today smart people actually get OFF the internet
This seems to be a lot better than what we have today...
Because it was
Remember when having call waiting, called I’d and an automatic answering machine was a luxury? Or when our phones were see through, and we paid to individual lines for each room..the best was seeing a car with a phone in it. How simple life was before the internet 😩
The video also points out that the average family had at least 4 kids! Though families may have downsized over the years the need for technology has skyrocketed!!
Seeing this perspective of the 90s internet juxtaposed to Terrence McKennas view of it from the same period in my feed is pretty interesting...
Fascinating!
If only the internet had stopped right at that point! Those kids came down to breakfast talking to their parents - instead of with earbuds in and living in their own worlds. The parents walked over to the computer to access its functions - instead of staring down into their iPads at the table being _accessed by_ the uncontrolled frenzy of click bait.
I honestly believe we had a good thing going circa 1995, but we could not filter the explosion of technologies and today our lives are run by tech, not helped by it.
@Brian Arbenz I agree with you in some aspects, but I think you can't just look at the bad parts. The internet is such a powerful tool if you use it the "right" way. You can access and learn new information faster than ever before, and connecting with people is easier than ever. But in my opinion, you should use it as a tool to make real life easier, and not as a substitute to real life, which a lot of people seem to do.
@@Paul_Meister Indeed. Overall, I have benefited more than suffered from the Internet. Probably a lot more.
Well said.
This was great. I remember those days. Everything then had like a golden glow 🌟 in my memories. 👍🤠
I think it's a two way street. I think computers have both made us dumber and able to share thoughts, news, opinions and free speech.
This is dystopic
Here is where I was wrong:
Context: Much of Internet 1.0 was deployed on the HW and SW built by my company
We were mostly tech guys, just trying to get stuff to work, so we were pretty shallow on impacts on society
1. We thought people would be able to make better decsions with access to data and logic
What we didn't anticipate:
a) People make emotional decisions
We didn't expect social media and the emotional manipulation that comes with it.
Here is what we did get right:
1. Paperless Office (or 99% paperless)
a) Funny story. We used to have these big low filing cabinets in our offices. Little by little, everything went online.
So we didn't have any paper to file
So I filled my filing cabinets with snacks
The dumbest thing I did was buy a lot of trail mix
Which is designed for people burning 500 calories per hour while hiking
Not some dude pushing a mouse
So I got fat
But I was popular, since people would stop by for snackeroos
I gave Steve Jobs a bad review in 1993
To me, he was just another washed up CEO (John Scully had fired him from Apple and now he was doing NeXT)
NeXT was under powererd
Lacked software and too expensive (Steve was going for consumer market)
There were computers aimed at the engineering market ($60-100K) that had sufficinet power, but wrong software for consumer (Sun, Apollo, and maybe SGI)
But 20 years later, I figured out the real problem was Steve was thinking 20 years ahead of the HW and SW of the era.
So what we have now is what Steve wanted in 1993. We just didn't have the technology to do what he wanted.
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing your experience.
David Hoffman filmmaker
Pretty faithful in essence. No spam, bots or ads though… I’d take simple interface without those any day. Also missing is the dynamic interaction social media and messaging has brought.
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing!
Omg I remember this ad , it’s so easy dad can do it. Ha ha I had those phones and that computer system. That was me. I enjoyed the walk down memory lane. And man did it ever come true! I was just telling my husband how much technology we have gained over what isn’t a long period of time by any standards. And it still blows our minds. Our grandkids have never known life without technology. High tech to me was the electric typewriter!!!
the paradox is that the only thing "true experience" can't do is actually true experience
The World Wide Web was officially up around 1992/93 with banks and big businesses-the only ones with a website. Wasnt officially in our homes till 97 despite being heavily invested in.
Eh, banks not so much. In fact, even now, I would say most banks are still barely in the 2000s. Many still insist on using fax for some transactions. Same with medical. They are both woefully behind.
WWW was in homes well before 1997. In 1995 there were ISP's everywhere and PC's were selling off the shelves by people who wanted to get online. Next to Windows OS, Internet in a Box or IBOX was the most popular software which included Mosaic browser, email, USENET, email and IRC.
The first home based internet I experienced was a dial-up service offered by Prodigy at a friends house in 1993. It was basic, on a black and white DOS monitor, but at the same time fantastic!
Thanks for sharing I graduated in 95, so long ago. My older brother got internet in that same year for his apartment. Thanks again for the video.👍🙂🎥
Interesting David. Thank you ❤️
The users today can never be mad at the privacy we used to have, we chose to have none.
No matter how much the world changes, dad will always burn the pancakes
I worked at AT&T in 90-92 specialized in calling cards and calling plans.
boy how things changed.
I love the internet!
The Social Media, not so much.
I wonder how many people really used this.
*David Hoffman 1995 appreciate your videos Listening 🌟 from Mass USA TYVM 💙 David Hoffman*
I was there 30 years ago. I used bulletin boards (BBS) even before the internet was available to us little people. Then in 1993 I got dialup internet and it was better than the BBS scene.
Thanks for uploading this video. I want to be someone like you someday.
3:22 Santa Barbara Seals? I lived in Santa Barbara most of my life. I did not know they had a hockey team. Perhaps it was a youth league. There was one Ice rink called the Ice Patch but I was not an ice skater.
This was interesting in light of the Y2K Bug that scared the big companies around the world because of date issue of the last two numbers 00 would everything go back to 1900 instead of turning to 2000.
It did mess up our cable bill. Time Warner sent a dude to our house telling us to give him $100 or he'd take the box. We, of course, handed it to him and spouse went over the next day to sort it out...not handing some rando most of our grocery $ for the month! We were paid up but their system messed up several people's bills in our area. They ended up giving us a much better box and plan for awhile. I had to go to work at 6 am on NYD 2000 and OSHA required us to have water and other supplies in case of disaster...I was an assistant manager in a now defunct furniture and home accessories retail store. 🤪
Enjoyed watching David Hoffmans time machine. Thx!
Yes the fridge door with a computer screen for info and ordering and gizmos never happened, all that info is available, however we use text and it is more fragmented, different businesses provide different services
Yea I remember that futuristic idea as well. Never happened for some reason.
Thing is, fridge manufacturers literally have installed computer devices into the doors so technically, you can order food from your local grocery store directly from the fridge. Its just you have to go to the grocery stores website. This is the case I canada at least.
Definitely! You could argue that this is the early working from home model.
little did we know that screens would go from these quick transactional interactions to 3-6hrs a day of screen usage thanks to social media.
I remember those days but look what people can do with just a Android phone nowadays.
Look how much information about ourselves we give away freely.
Not only has technology become advanced it has become compact we baby boomers would know back in the 1950's and 60's computer took up an entire room. I sure you would remember those rectangle vanilla cards that had holes punch in them so when you insert them into the slot of the computer the computer would be able to read the card.
Good times when we had interfaces where every button was clearly labeled, not needing to be clicked to show what its function is.
Anyone else find this family vaguely creepy? Maybe it's just me.
To paraphrase: "Houston, We have a problem."
What this video did not tell you:
The kids' voice recordings used up 70% of hard drive space. 🙃
I always think why did I not buy stock in Microsoft, google and Amazon back in the 90s. Not like we couldn’t see it coming.
1:48 UA Flight #45 has historically been the non-stop service between Zurich and San Francisco.
Best sure to read the description! Lots of interesting and important info there.
What they had back then was basically a kind of Siri.
Windows 3.0. Brings back memories.
ah....when the net was controlled by portals
this was not the internet or the world wide web
this was a portal controlled by att
1995? Damn that's the year I was born.
The internet was the destruction of families. You can have a lot of knowledge but what good is it with real time interaction?♥️🇨🇦
Nostalgic
Other than the big computer, it gets everything pretty well
AT&T held a large piece of the telecommunications market in 1995, and I am of the opinion that as innovative as they seemed, they were a dinosaur that reflected the established communication network- and they were interested in getting as big a piece of the rapidly proliferating internet and related technologies market as they could- and seemed intent on controlling what that looked like. Luckily, with the internet and cell phones came all sorts of innovation and competition. AT&T was positioned better than anyone to see big changes coming, and yet there’s no way they could see just how different the future of communication would truly be. This video demonstrates the limit of the telecom giants foresight and vision.
No logon tone?!?! I miss that sound.
this is what a family thinks other families think their family should look.
Interesting..
AT&T was such a study in contradictions. So many there were truly visionary geniuses that you would swear were time travelers. Almost all of the “You Will” campaign came true exactly as predicted. Of course, they were hung up on having to “GO” to where the technology was to use these applications, public video pay phones, established video conference rooms, libraries and the like to use specalized devices. So, they missed the personalized nature of having a general supercomputer in everyone’s pocket. But that idea was so fantastical in the late 80s and 90s as to be pure science fiction.
Part of things like this video was selling the sizzle of high-bandwidth applications with high user density. They were a network company by this time and had just bet the farm on ISDN, only to begrudgingly have to abandon it for DSL when they really started getting beat up by cable modem companies.
I remember things like cloud computing and Zoom calling were around back in the 90s though it was very primitive compared to today.
How many people keep their PC in the kitchen nowadays? (Excluding kitchen laptop use.)
That's a long ad for how at&t will make something for every step.
It never ran on TV. It was designed to show at conferences and really to AT&T employees and the hundreds of AT&T partners.
David Hoffman filmmaker
Some of the items shown at the 3-minute Mark and continuing, seem more like Facebook. All the little notifying people seems to be pretty much Facebook around here where I live. Even political parties use their Facebook page to notify everybody.
Mrs. Doubtfire narrated this?
The wife sure reminds me of June Cleaver. I guess Google and Apple sure cracked that AT&T protection on their computers. Thanks for the memories. June's voice message said Chrysler stock was at $50. Today it's around $12. Just saying.
this is vaporwave material
2:32 ohokayilltakeanotherroutethanksalot!
Almost 10 years later they predicted idiocracy and a scanner darkly odd how that happened right?
This is making me realize that we haven't really progressed. We just made this system look better and function quicker. And now it's to a point where it's taking jobs and livelihoods from people. We're so backwards as a species
Not so much backwards as shortsighted. New technology is often produced without thinking about how to control it, e.g., lithium batteries that can be a fire hazard if charged inside; phones that allow us to talk and text while driving. My fear is that we produce technology that we cannot control - remember "Hal" in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Technology can be a two-edged sword.
@@agingerbeard I'm talking about from 95 to now. There was plenty of progression before the 90s. One of humanity's biggest progressive moments in history was definitely from 1930s to the 1990s.
@@agingerbeard I know technology has advanced greatly since 90s, but solely tech is NOT progression. Progress comes from the reasons behind the advancement and what it does to strengthen our hold on the planet and vastness around it. You mentioned that I was I only talking about fraction less than 1% of our history. Take that same fraction and move it back to 1960-1990. In that span of time we went to the moon, we created atm machines, we created usable computers, we created the Doppler radar which is literally the foundation of tracking weather, we created MRIs, cars got electronic fuel injections, PCs were created, cellphones, and then the internet which is the base of all technology after 1995. That was human progression. Not the ability to like someone’s picture on the other side of the world and then wonder if an AI is going to take your job.
@@agingerbeard Those three things you listed off are just upgrades to things that were created between 1930 and 1990. There has been 0 ground up creations that’s beneficial for us as human beings. No desire to risk everything on a hunch. Granted, you can say that it was due to human competition that achieved so much in those times (first programmable computer was made to break Germany encrypted codes and we went to the moon to beat Russia there) but still, that was progress. JWST is incredible, but it didn’t break all understanding and visual representation of existence like Hubble did. JWST made clearer the things that Hubble was already showing us
They never foresaw the memes.
It's kind of creepy. I'm glad that AT&T wasn't able to fulfill their evil desires. It's bad enough that we have Comcast around.
It absolutely did not become this. More like a dystopian tragic comedy. Or like Minority Report.
2 minutes for an update! I can't wait 2 minutes!!!😵💫😫😵💫😫
I'm joking....
Yes, it did.
The porn and OF and social media ruined the internet
Great in theory, but they did not account for games and mindless scrolling lol
Imagine buying Walmart stocks then. 📈
I like this better, lets do this.
They got it right but it’s not as cool as they predicted
The daughter looks like Alyson Stoner.
AT&T new and innovative ways for you to whack off without having stacks of jazz mags to hide 👍
Narrator sounds like Zoolander. Good vid though.