AT&T's vision of the future, circa 1993 - AT&T Archives
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
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At AT&T, envisioning the future in 1993 was nothing new. The company had made films projecting the future as far back as the 1960s. That impetus back then came from the confluence of the world entering the space age and the computer age at the same time. The early films included Challenge of Change (1961) and Talking of Tomorrow (1962).
The next real wave of future predictions came out of the marketing arm of AT&T about 30 years later. In the media sphere, Wired magazine, launched in January 1993, set an optimistic and futuristic tone that went hand in hand with new developments in computer communications in the corporate sphere. It also became very popular very quickly. Concurrently, almost every large company with a stake in the digital (Sun, Apple, Philips, etc.) put their own similar film visions forward - there's a list of some of their films in a project by theorist Natalie Jeremijenko and designer Chris Woebken. Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future laid out the company's projections.
AT&T's futurist message had a much greater impact on television. The memorable "You Will" commercials (all 7 of them, and full of touchscreen tech) debuted in 1993. Directed by (then-)music video director David Fincher, they had a dark tone but an optimistic vision. Pacific Telephone, too, put forth similar futurist scenarios that same year in the film Neighborhood.
The AT&T Tech Channel made a few theoretical "You Will" ads recently, and another short animated film about coming tech, In the Not Too Distant Future.
Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ
This is like something you'd see on a sci-fi show where everything seems pleasant enough at first, but just beneath the surface lies a dystopian nightmare.
Saint Tranny the Harry haha, I was about to say the same. 😂
Demolition Man vibes intensify
Star ship Troopers
we are getting there now
At is amazing how much they did get right. Tablets, V.R. on line shopping, Video conference and the list go on. Visionaries beyond thire time. The only thing they got wrong was their involvement in it.
oh... you would be amazed at what star trek predicted 3 decades prior lol
It's easy to think of new things.. the hard part is finding the technology to do it.
Lol are you serious? First off these predictions aren’t crazy at all it was the 90s not 30s. The technology we use now apart from smart phones were all things back then just not evolved on the level they are now lol unless you believe these things we use today just magically popped out of nowhere in the last 10 to 15 years… if we guess that in the year 2050 we’ll be using Driverless vehicles and super advanced AI does that make us ahead of our time for predicting the very obvious trends of now?
@@JohnWick-qr4yc Yup. People think of 1993 as if it's "So long ago It might as well be FOREVER!".
Having lived through 1993 and involved in tech at the time, most of this stuff already existed in 1993 in some form or another. Or it was already patently obviously that it was just around the corner (video conferencing for instance).
Much of the predictions are just wildly inaccurate. In the 90s many "futurist" people thought the new UI element for everything would be a voice interface like in Star Trek. Fast forward 30 years, and almost nothing is. I think largely because it's too hard to invent language to describe everything you want to control. Language is just a bit too imprecise for a lot of things as well.
If I had to guess what'll happen by 2050, I'd concentrate less on the whiz-bang computer stuff, which has reached maturity. I don't think many, if any people will be using driver-less cars... that, and AI have recently hit brick walls in terms of advances.
I'd bet more on the biotech realm. Continuing large advances in cancer treatment will continue further and further. We likely won't "crack" cancer, but maybe you'll see claims that we have by then. Maybe we'll finally get some treatments for genetic diseases.
Stop being a sheep. The technology was already there obviously.
0:24 Facetime (yes)
0:24 Speech recognition (yes)
0:24 Real-time translation (almost)
0:43 Real-time voice augmentation (soon; Adobe VoCo)
1:27 Personal tablets with cameras (yes)
1:30 Voice commands (yes)
1:30 Smart Real-time visual augmentation (no/almost; Pokemon Go?)
1:40 3D Modelling for architecture (yes)
1:46 Cell phones/smart phones (yes)
1:46 Curved displays (yes)
2:17 Black lawyers (yes)
2:57 VR Headset (yes)
2:57 VR Multiplayer (yes/almost)
3:10 Virtual reminders (yes)
4:16 Widescreen monitors (yes)
4:20 Voice recognition for security (yes/almost)
4:57 Touchscreen monitors (yes)
5:06 Thin-bezel monitors (yes)
5:13 Wide-screen TVs (yes)
5:23 TV in a picture frame (no)
5:23 Smart TVs (yes)
5:54 Virtual personal assistant (yes)
5:54 Virtual assistant who holds conversations (no/soon; Cortana, Siri, Google Assistant)
6:24 Holographs (no)
8:10 Online/virtual shopping (yes)
8:10 Voice-controlled shopping/virtual 3D previews (no/soon?)
9:35 Electronic/computer-based classroom (yes)
9:45 Virtual personal teachers (no)
10:14 Presentation on a flash card (yes)
12:43 Windows Aero (yes)
13:54 Gay Indians (yes)
I played multiplayer in VR with my friends last night. We lost at capture the flag paintball :(
It's not a rendering of my body, but there is a movable avatar with expressions
What year are they projecting?
"Gay Indians (yes)"
OPEN BOB
0:47 ample legroom in coach (no)
Picture in Picture television and phone-calls are a thing.
It's cute that AT&T thought we'd use phone booths in the future.
Brian Bock ... LOL
Well here in the Uk they're still used - but only as toilets.
Now they're being converted into Wi-Fi hotspots
@Brian Bock I know right, imagine the weight of them, there's no way we could carry one around let alone fit it in our pocket
@@ewaf88 Yes true
The one in pedestrian part of Lancaster smells like piss and is full of crap and mould and though its in use its never cleaned
It's funny how they were able to predict that you could have an 'iPad' and make a "facetime" call on it, while they also thought people would still use a public pay phone (although with video call ability). Strangely they didn't seem to think people would use mobile phones, despite them already being available in 1993.
Probably because at the time it was ''expensive'' and they somehow couldn't see that they would become more accessible. Also perhaps decades of other sci-fi influencing them, we always had video calls from stationary or big machines with a computer screen in our sci-fi
Not as funny as an idiot who calls a tablet and iPad and video chat FaceTime Apple didn't invent those things dumbass.
@@lkrnpk but the daughter was already in the middle of an international, auto-translated group video chat between the Nepalese rug designer, her boyfriend in France, and herself while on the airplane, on a small screen. Even the Nepalese village merchant had his own personal mobile smart tablet with international video group chatting and auto-translation capability. The family had several smart TVs around the house with not only group videochatting, but also virtual intelligent agents with natural language processing built in. I don't see why the daughter wouldn't just pull out a tablet like the merchant's from a purse or something.
The only thing AT&T got wrong was their role in all of it...
+Steven P nailed it
Thats true on the surface.. but bell labs created the transistor, they launched the first practical communications satellite and att still runs the biggest transport network in the world, so when you Google, facetime, navigate or whatever - on any provider chances are at some point it's carried by AT&T... and/or technology that evolved from what many people spent their careers developing, while working at AT&T. This american powerhouse played a big part in how we communicate today.
Yes lol xD
To be fair, AT&T tried to be the big role it wanted to be when it purchased NCR and TCI Cablevision during the 90s. Unfortunately for them, the dotcom bubble (and burst) put a huge financial strain on the company and they sold off a large chunk of the company.
The AT&T as we know it today was a result of a takeover from, ironically, one of their own spinoff (baby bell) , SBC.
Steve P Exactly. lol
It's amazing when I watched this kind of stuff back in the 80's and 90's predicting future technology I thought, "Man, the future is going to be cool - I can't wait!" Now, I wish I could go back to the 80's and 90's before all of this techno stuff.
Sure buddy.
Let's see you go without your smartphone, widescreen 4K tv, Netflix, laptop PC, Fast(er) Internet, driver assist, power steering vehicles, MP3 players/streaming, modern medical advancements etc..
It can be crap today, but many people forget it was also crap yesterday.
I garauntee you in another 30 years time, when they have holographic vids, super smart A.I., robots servants etc...they'll pine just like you for the good 'ol days of the 2010's and 2020's
@@AdmiralBison "Let's see you go without your smartphone, widescreen 4K tv, Netflix, laptop PC, Fast(er) Internet, driver assist, power steering vehicles, MP3 players/streaming, modern medical advancements etc.."
Billions of people manage without this stuff every day. It's superfluous. Your slavery to technology and loss of basic skills are your own failings, don't drag the rest of us into it.
Less and less people manage without that stuff and while we are at it, we might as well go back to 1900 or before and do without cars and electricity too, I am not saying it isn't possible, yes, many people live like that, but we are modern people... I would feel very bad if I did not have internet anymore, even if it's more healthy or anything. I would feel like I am missing a piece@@BritishJuche
People are obsessed with voice commands, but using a mouse or keyboard or tapping with your finger is still faster and easier virtually all the time
True
And quieter. People get irritated very quickly with people talking to their devices, in public at least.
That must have been an amazing PowerPoint presentation to re-orient everyone’s moral compass like that.
They just couldn't forsee that nobody uses pay phones anymore...
"My dad is still stuck in the 90's. Just last week he bought the new Nirvana CD at Kmart. He can't believe that Kurt Cobain just turned 55. The funny thing is. He saw their old drummer working there. I think his name is Dave something. Why am I flying, when I could be in my flying car?"
The ending should have been the happy couple telling the lovely old store owner, that they've named their baby after him. It would have enhanced the heart warming romantic theme that AT&T were going for.
Hey look there's a galaxy fold that actually works.
Yep
Riiiiiight‼️
Or doesn't break easy!
Oh hehehehhe.
🤣
But, will i be able to send a fax from the beach?
Basicaly they were saying email via tablet.
I've basically done that many times. They never truly meant fax - they just needed to quickly communicate the concept of sending a document wirelessly.
Yes you can. There are apps now that let you send a fax. And presuming you have some reception at the beach, you will!
Bodyknight - No, but we will install a teletype on every beach at the beach-meister's watch-tower for your convenience.
@Michael Trent - Sorry. I tried. But I have a world war trauma since 1919.
jesus, does EVERYONE in the future speak in that low-key prozac tone of voice?
Well, yeah. Much of the population is on psych meds like antidepressants these days, so they weren't far off lol
just what do you think you're doing, dave?
this was a more optimistic vision of the future where the government added prozac to the water supply
Kubrick showed us the ipad and the "Skype" in 2001 a Space Odyssey , 1968
um, no... star trek showed us those things first in 1962...
AT&T predicted samsung galaxy fold ! Lol
As Isaac Asimov once put it: "Predicting the future is a hopeless, thankless task, with ridicule to begin with and, all too often, scorn to end with."
It doesn't stop it being fun to think about though.
5:30 - I love how the avatar of the on screen helper or whatever you'd call it, has a monotone Siri like voice. In their version of the future, they still haven't perfected computerized voices.
They were trying to avoid the Uncanny Valley even in the 1990s.
what's amazing to me is that a lot of this has come through already. I communicate with my family like this all the time
Yes Sir
I love the infomercial style acting. Completely 90's. AT&T had no clue about the pocket supercomputers we all carry today.
+cblizz7301 Well one of them was holding a tablet
@@ewaf88 Tablet yes, but no one in this video carries a typical smartphone or even an average mobile phone, although in 1993 they were available.
@@mikoajbachosz3673 Well the was already the Simon Personal communicator from 1992 do a strange oversight. Regarding cameras it could be because nobody could see the point of them. However like text messages cameras on phones took off like wildfire so predicting the future is so difficult. Perhaps the next big thing is already with us but we haven't recognised it yet
I think too that until the iPhone was established people didn't think we would have one singular gadget for most of our daily activities. In pre iPhone futurism you see people using multiple devices each specialized in one or a few tasks. It's pretty incredible that we can run most apps on one device.
@@kylemerryman2074 Imagine taking the latest iPhone back to 1958. You could probably get away with saying that you were from the 23rd century.
they are in the future but still dress like in the 90'S!!!!
Fashion repeats!
With these future tech projections there's always one thing that bothers me. The sociologic construct remains essentially the same.
It was The Great 90’s Fashion Resurgence of 2021...
And yep kids in 2021 start to dress like in the 90s again. Their prediction is 1000% accurate.
Wow they thought of the concept of a folding smart phone in 1993. Now in 2019 becoming a reality.
Well they had folding dumb phones in 93, my dad had one, so I'm sure they were already trying to develop better stuff at that time
I like the disclaimer at the end where it reminds everyone that it's fictional.. derp no shit.
You don't see that disclaimer anymore. It was a thing back then.
4:04 - "The phones are this way"
They still thought phone booths would exist in the 21st century and couldn't envision every person on the planet with a cell phone in their pocket
There are still some phone booths in the odd place or so.
Looks like a mid 1990s Sci Fi Movie.
5:26 Intelligent Agents check
6:10 Group FaceTime check
1:26 Galaxy Fold Tablet
7:57 ordering food through a digital assistant and online shopping 🛍
It's so cool to see the full version of this! Back in the 1990s, I only saw a small portion, which was featured in a TV show called "Breakthroughs: Amazing Things to Come" hosted by LL Cool J.
Hey, the "translator" also changes the mouth movement to match the translation?
Actually that would be a legit feature
Well... technically possible nowadays? Maybe 5 more years :)
They got everything right, including the fashion, because I still dress like Zack Morris with shoulder pads.
If you watched this in 1993 - the future would have seen so new and exciting - but the trouble is the future arrives very slowly - minute by minute - hour by hour - day by day so we only see small incremental changes which eventually add up to something big.
Occasionally there is a game changer in design - like the original iPhone - but since then phones have just slowly get better every year. Most improvements are already forecast anyway so that by the time the new mobile arrives - there's very little in the way of surprise.
Perhaps if you could have been frozen back in 1993 and woken up now you'd be pretty amazed. Incredible phones - robots that can do backflips - Ultra high definition TV - self driving cars (not perfect) and slim flat screen computers in nearly every home connected to a high speed internet.
Cities of the future like Dubai with the Birj Khalifa and Drones which can take ultra high definition video. Yes there would be plenty of new things to enjoy.
Don't forget RTX graphics.
It's strange that in 1993 mobile phones were already available and AT&T didn't think that they will be in common use in the future. (except this tablet/phone)
Foldable smartphone
Mobile phones will disappear, once the brain damage by its radiation has been proven. Yet mobile radio lobby acts like British American Tobacco (flooding courts with thousands of distracting scientific studies), but we all know the reputation cigarettes have today.
That's the Orlando Florida Airport, can tell by the carpet.
They still have the same carpet, 27 years later?😂🤣🤣🤣
@@erich1070 I recognized the train in 3:53. Makes sense given AT&T was the sponsor to Spaceship Earth (EPCOT Center) at the time.
I think AT&T got a lot of their predictions right!! Touchscreen, tablets, notebooks, slate-shaped phones, voice input and information terminals in public places. The main things AT&T didn't get right was virtual reality (still a long way to go with that) and interpreting to English from French and other languages... machines can translate but not quite interpret yet. The shopping for wedding clothes is about halfway there, in that you can browse product images and videos but not with that level of interaction. Good video though, enjoyed it :-)
+Benjy Dale Regarding VR- Oculus Rift HCT Vive, Play Station VR??
+lkrnpk That's true :-) That stuff is starting to kick off, but will it be the next big "thing"? I remember back in 1991/2 Sega VR and Virtuality on the TV programme Games Master and that only achieved a niche market at best.
Touch-screens already exited in 1993, they're from the 1980s. Voice input is also from the 1980s. So did notebooks and tablet prototypes.
So they didn't really imagine anything new.
Here is sad part. All those technologies that they were talking about existed in ATT research labitories at that time. Key is such things were still in research states, probably still expensive to produce being well prototypes, and last some technologies can evolve in interesting directions.
Update for 2024. AI is now allowing us to do those things.
They got the part where everyone spends all their time looking at little screens right!
*funny that the future still has 1990's hair and 1980's shoulder pads...
This is sooo true, it's now! wow insane how the prediction, even down to the flat screen tvs
The VR thing looked like a early version of Sega VR.
Public phone speak password out loud That's really wise
What would be really good is to see if they can try and re-enact all this using today's technology or its equivalent.
WHAT!? ATT made an expanded version of the You Will commercials? This IS valuetainment!
We'll have all of this technology by 2020-2023.. And to think, just a few years ago it all seemed like a pipe dream.
The American yep, still 2019. A lot can happen in 12 months and most of this stuff exists or is close to existing. A tablet with a camera, photo editing software, voice control (Hey Siri), and the ability to receive (and make) a video call is what I”m using to type this comment. ❤️ This iPad also has an app that can also help me see how a piece of IKEA furniture would look in my apartment. The presentation on a flash drive, FaceTime, voice activated calling from the car via the stereo, flat screen TVs, VR headsets for gaming, and the aforementioned tablet computer are already here, and real-time translation, conversations with Siri/Contera/Alexa, and virtual teachers cannot be that far off. TBH, human teachers will always be better than virtual teachers.
@The American Still wrong...
As @John Wick said, all of these technologies were in the pipeline when this video was made, they were just too expensive to offer to consumers or businesses at the time. The bandwidth was also not there yet; most people were still using dial-up connections over copper telephone lines, which were not robust enough to transmit all of that data. With the advent of DSL and then cable and fiber connections, we were able to see this tech come along more
if that is the case, imagine what is available right now, but we simply do not have the supporting infrastructures today to really use them to their potential.
@@AdmiralBison Yes, we need a better infrastructure for sure. Fiber everywhere!
Its interesting that some of the things they show in this video are actually pretty spot on, such as the guy taking a picture with a tablet. Some things are still futuristic such as the transparent monitors. Some of the ideas presented are also what I would consider a little "retro" futuristic with the public interactive video communication booths and the absence of standardized internet/WWW based technology.
Transarent screens are becoming a thing now with OLED technology. The more important question is, why would you want that?
01:29 THEY PROPHESIZE THE ADVENT OF SAMSUNG GALAXY FOLD! 😱
They had the concepts and ideas right. Thats for sure. Microsoft also predicted the IOT. 1992 Future Home
holy crap this is pretty accurate...thats a friggin ipad in 1993
1993, ATT show cased technology that would be used in the FUTURE. 2020, ATT has a digital video archive show cased in a digital audio-visual-communications platform called You-Tube lol! Man.. I love this..
They all sound like star trek next generation speakers, monotone with funny twirling sounds, lolol
4:34-5:03 again a great representation of the future, talking on the phone through a tv or video screen, the having the language spoken to you in English fully translated
It's funny they thought they'd pass the savings on to the consumer.
Mediacare would disagree with that, they would demand the Discount for them.
They didn't really think that, however AT&T never passed up an opportunity to dramatize their supposed altruism.
Disclaimer: All actors appearing in this production are full time AT&T staff and/or their family members. Thank you for watching.
AT&T never heard of internet back in 1993 ?
I doubt that we'll see real time translations in the next twenty years, it's such a hard problem to solve.
They built something like that already back in 2012 that can fit in your hand, it still has some bugs, but it works rather well.
2015 Skype has achieved that technology at least for captions
Carrandas it works pretty well already with phones
I recommend you check out the UN headquarters sometime
I'm fairly certain they meant machine real-time translation. The UN has human real-time translators.
1:45 is a concept for either FaceTime, Skype, or Zoom.
2:56 is a concept for a VR headset like the Oculus Rift.
Very interesting video! I wonder where this video originally aired or perhaps it was an internal video for AT&T employees. I wonder who the actors were as well.
Yes, these Pullovers still exist! They were spot on!
I like how bro's office area was like some evil kingpin's office.
Here in 2018. 25 years from these videos.
What happened to At &T?
Yeah, a whole lot of water will flow under the bridge till we have Star Trek-style instant translation that synthesizes your voice perfectly talking in another language...
8:30 “Shorter???“
“Only in the FRONT mumm!“
LOL
"Heroes and Whores" sounds like a game I would buy at the midnight launch.
Rockstar's next AAA game.
00:43-00:58 is cool talking to someone using video and cell phone, slick cool, and on a plane at that. Tight man, tight. And your voice is automatically translated, tight
Wow! This is so cool! We are so close to this technology in 2020! Amazing!
I was wondering why they didn't update the clothing, but I bet they didn't want to make them look like the Jetsons lol!
Thank you for posting this ! I liked how they did this !
Anyone watching this online in 1995?
2002. Couldn’t afford a computer ‘95.
Too bad AT&T did not invent a Star Trek type transporter to beam us around the planet to those important meetings instead of utilizing stone age conference calls.
the car looked like an EV1 but had a weird gasoline sound effect probably added by the oil companies who also own ATT lol
Why the near-total lack of people of color, any color, except the Arabic-seeming walking stereotype and the "ideal" African American businessman? What happened to the rest of the aforementioned populations? For that matter, where is any economic class aside from upper-middle class? Mostly, why does AT&T think they're gonna be the last word in technological advancements, when this video was made at the beginning of their demise?
9:33 The time when people still imagined that online learning would be fun, until.... errr...2020
Interesting that they go so much right and so much wrong. Video phones aren't exactly commonplace yet. And they didn't envision the net as it exists today but they came within a hairs width.
Actually even back when you made this comment FaceTime and Skype had already been in use for several years - so the framework was already in place. Everybody has a videophone right in their pocket today. 😉
secure voice controlled locks are no longer a thing in 2000s, but may be coming back due to covid. It was possible and the tech was sold for $1500USD between 1993-98. IEI Voicekey. As for phone booths? In 1998 I saw them everywhere in Buenos Aires Argentina and they are STILL in use in many countries in Europe and further EAST. Alot of tech that is predicted here is either here now or has been surpassed and remember back then in the 90s, high tech communications was so expensive that ATT and others only figured it would be available for PUBLIC use not private as the cost was too high. So public video phones and public internet kiosks,etc. BA Argentina 1998! It was a thing! Internet cafes, and public phone booths. Cell phones were still too expensive in 98 so in 93.. ha! Fogetta bou it! Public video phones in the USA are not a thing but they are in other countries NOT USA.
So glad I was brought up during this era and not the social media messes we have today!
LOL at the NIMBY chick trying to block the apartments. truly prophetic
The guy's tablet looks like a GALAXY FOLD LOL!
This AT&T ad is eerie, isn't it? Like they were already showing off tech they'd been holding back in 1993! DARPA priming the public, perhaps? Makes you wonder what kind of future they've been keeping under wraps.
I like how at the end the guy miraculously learns English
4:30 Is that Majel Barrett's voice? It's either her, or they consciously got a sound-alike.
I feel like I'm watching lifetime but the acting is better.
This is actually really good...?
Never mind..
The first 'futuristic' idea is not that far off, as Ive seen a demonstration, where they had 2 people, the first being allowed to be animated - 'show facial expression, whilst the second was made to stare straight at the camera, unsmiling. Expressionless. As the first person changed their facial expression, their expression was transferred digitally to the 'emotionless person.
No, they didn't just mix the 2 images, the software was able to manipulate the image, so the 'emotionless person's face appeared (on the screen) to mimic the first person.
I'm sure this is on RUclips, and, the clip I saw was funny, because, us, the viewer, were watching the whole thing - both actors, as well as their images, so, you could see the expressionless one sitting, and clearly not smiling, or opening their mouth, but, the image showed them doing so.
Combine this technology, with a vocal translator which acts as close to real-time, and the appearance of someone (not knowing the recipient's language) over a service like FaceTime, or Skype, and it'll happen, and I'm certain both Apple, as well as M'soft (who owns Skype_ are doing this at the moment.
Deep Fake tech can and will be used to manipulate the masses with demographic specific media events.
The laptops in the classrooms is pretty creepy. I'm a teacher, and we just got those three years ago.
what about now? 😳
Looks like some weird Babylon 5/star trek episode where they go back in time
Some of the things here are 2020, others are 2050.
They got most of it right. The way they talk though 😂😂
Everyone is a patronizing hippie and TV productions still can't get perspective right. This will be accurate forever.
Remember seeing this in middle school
Love the flat screen with the call coming in . . .
Mr. Harrison-Adams really came thru in the end. what a guy
They love to name drop all the international places.
ooh guys this is proof of time traveling
Do you think that people will be as nice as this in the future ?
Yup, this is the world we are living in now (minus looking like extras from the final season of "Falcon Crest"). I wonder what is next for us? I think we are likely to get bored of the technology and empty consumption ultimately. We will put it all away in the end, or leave it to the machines to look after us and go away and chant incantations, dressed like druids, amid stone circles.
Cottagecore 🦋
It's actually really scary how closest is to reality
Q&A with Henry Bassman, writer and director for these. He answers some of the questions posed in the comments. paleofuture.gizmodo.com/writer-and-producer-of-connections-at-ts-vision-of-th-512630422
"Please confirm your identity by saying the random 12 word seed key" lol
That’s scarily accurate
Hindi script running in the incorrect direction!?!!?
Hindi is written from left to right, just like European languages, so it should scroll the same way too.