The Future as predicted in 1993

Watch this video. A series of commercials by AT&T predicting the technologies we will use in the future.

I’m impressed by how correct they were with these. Of course, the way the various products or technologies are used today ended up much more elegant than predicted for the most part (Where is my gigantic touchscreen CRT!), but the ideas are very close to the same. A lot of these things are refined simply from revelations in the size of the internal elements of computing devices.

And I don’t think anyone is tucking their baby in from a phone booth. What’s a phone booth? (Isn’t it kind of funny that the movie Phone Booth is so irrelevant after just a few years?) But I’m sure some people do use the Ustream iPhone app to stream tucking a baby in to a parent or loved one who is too far away to see it.

I think the best part about all of that is the enhanced ability to communicate. Video chat, working from anywhere in the world, even a remote beach. People say that being in front of a computer dehumanizes people, but I think the opposite is happening. People are more connected, more in touch, and know what’s going on in each others’ lives now more than ever.