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Submitted and Written by Ian W
These ads from the early 90’s were actually quite prophetic.
I know we just featured a classic AT&T ad, but this one jumped right off the voting pages. It’s almost creepy how well a lot of the technologies in this ad are available now.
AT&T: good at predicting the future, bad at giving me reception on my cell phone.
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AT&T… after all these years, still the Death Star.
I remember specifically thinking that there was no way in the world that computing power and communications speed would advance adequately in my lifetime to enable a street-level car navigation system with accurate mapping, topography, and large building representation.
(ok… I think the streetlights on the simulated GPS pissed me off more than anything else…but hey… I didn’t understand Moore’s law back then. I think it was more the 18 months time-frame that I didn’t have real perspective on, not the exponential growth.)
Is that Jenna Elfman as the “mom” calling to tuck the baby in?
Is that a young Monica Raymund looking at the book?
You will do all these things.
AT&T won’t.
Future technology+Tom Selleck=Epin Win.
Agreed!
Commercials…
…
More commercials…
that is totally jenna elfman!!
Good call – I’m going to support you with that assumption and I’m almost positive that it’s Tom Selleck doing the voice over, too.
IMDB confirms both your assumptions
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000633/otherworks (“TV commercial for AT&T Long Distance (“You will” series) (voice) (1993)”)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001184/otherworks (“TV commercial for AT&T”)
Apple will bring it to you. Not AT&T
Really? Which internet backbone provider does Apple own? OR Cell Phone? (note that the iPhone uses the AT&T network).
Apple brings you NONE of this, that isn’t provided by their machines hooking into SOMEONE ELSE’S network – and most of the time, it’s either AT&T, or AT&T’s old nemesis, Sprint.
lolno, Apple didn’t bring any of this to us. They may have copied it, but no, Apple didn’t pioneer anything. They also can’t bring any of this to anyone alone. Guess what network the iPhone is on? Oh look, AT&T.
Holy crap, where can I get an iPhone the size of a Trapper Keeper? That’s awesome!
[/satire]
All’s I know is, at the Bell Telephone pavillion at the 1964 World’s Fair, they demonstrated a picture phone (5 inch black and white screen) and promised us that by 1970, every home in America would have one!
It’s the whole “Position the camera and screen so both people can make eye contact” part that they’re still struggling with. Without that, video calls are just a gimmick with no sticking power.
Clearly you’ve never used a VP-200.
http://www.sorensonvrs.com/
In all honesty, if I could make video calls from my cell, I probably woudln’t. Why is that? Because I like to make calls while I’m walking from place to place, on the bus (yeah, I’m that person), or using my computer. I would never use the feature.
Plus, one of the nice things about the phone is, if I get a call, I can just pick up the phone, regardless of what I’m wearing, what my house looks, like, etc. If I had a video phone… not so much. I think video phones haven’t done well at least in part because people don’t want to have to treat answering the phone like they have a visitor in their house.
Oh well, I was just overjoyed that my mom bought a microwave by ‘75. Sweet, sweet technology!
Paying for toll without stopping…called an I-Pass. Or the EZ-Pass or the I-Zoom or whatever else they have for toll passes.
Video call to tuck the baby in at night…called a Webcam session.
Re-Routing without looking at a map…called a GPS.
Looking at books without really holding one…called Google Books.
Medical history in your pocket…called a Smart Card.
Most of these things don’t require any kind of telephone.
no, but many require a data network, one which AT&T provides (either via their cell towers, internet service or other similar means).
Exactly, Matt – and even stand-alone GPS have to be updated using a computer network.
This was an ad for ALL of AT&T’s services – not the tiny sliver that was, by that time, their remaining phone service.
In fact, their phone presence is bigger now, than when the ads were made, thanks to cell phone companies being bought by AT&T.
All these things already existed in 1993 when the commercial was made… it wasn’t like AT&T was looking into some kind of magic crystal ball.
i was thinking the same thing…
Some company probably patented these things as original ideas well after this commercial aired
they apparently didnt predict there would be no phone booths left to tuck in your baby from.
Too true. If you don’t have a mobile–even for emergency calls or your phone is out of juice or back at home…. you are screwed when it comes to trying to find a pay phone.
That baby is now old enough to have a driver’s license….
I was working in high-tech at the time, so this stuff was pretty old hat for my crowd in ‘93. What I wanted to see was tech that would scan your brain when you got into a car. If you were too idiotic, the car wouldn’t start.
“AT&T: good at predicting the future”
On “Mystery Science Theater 3000″, they once riffed on a short film from AT&T from way back (it was from 1962; it’s called “Century 21 Calling”, and it aired with “The Space Children”), and most of the technologies they talked about–pagers, call forwarding, call waiting, etc), did indeed come to pass. So AT&T has been doing this sort of thing for awhile now.
I saw that one. Some people have been totally amazed at how we “suddenly” went from vacuum tubes to transistors to microchips. Well, for those who worked in the industry, it wasn’t so sudden. There were a lot of missteps and failures along the way, but nobody likes to crow to the general public about how they messed up.
Does anyone make a vacuum tube PC sound card?
I will answer my own question: Yes. Why didn’t I just google it first?
Where is the card that carries a complete medical history? We could use that in the medical field.
That have that in other countries, but we can’t have that here because OH NO3S TEH EBIL SOCIALA-JISM!
Not to mention the religious nuts that somehow think it’s signaling the end of the world. Too bad we didn’t leave those archaic ideas in the past with all the other old stuff we don’t need anymore.
Kaiser now allows you to carry your medical history on a usb drive. BOoy-yah
No doubt, you still will.
Most of this we have, but we’re still waiting for our video phones, lol. Of course the technology is there, and well beyond what’s needed, but the market isn’t ready for it.
As for electronic tickets… done. Keyless entry… done. In-car navigation (GPS)… done. Faxing/Meeting from a beach… sort of done, just need to find a wireless hot-spot.
Very nice Nostalgia win. Thanks for posting these. I almost completely forgot about those commercials.
How awesome is it that AT&T brought us none of the things in these commercials? They’re damn good at predicting the future – which is apparently where their part in the future ends…
what do the majority of these technologies connect to? att’s network?
cell phone towers, independent telcos and internet providers travel over a network….who’s?
at&t provides a network data path. even the analog land line phone turns digital at the first piece of eqpt at 64kbs and stays digital to the last piece of eqpt.
the network was their point.
why will i need to tuck my baby in soooo many times?
wow i forgot about these commercials. i remember thinking i cant wait. and now, most of it is here.
but now at&t commercials are “wanna find a porn that just sells hentai, theres an app for that!” ggrrr
*porn shop [cough cough]
Heh, I like how there is an ad for a “garmin nuvifone” from AT&T showing GPS in the upper right hand corner