“You Will”, AT&T's ad campaign (1993) [video]

youtube.com

5 pointszinekeller2 comments

Reminds me of the MTV parody sketches or ads:

Paraphrasing: “Have you ever been fondled… by your toaster?”

That said, while the imagined implementation was way off, the ads did predict future tech pretty well. As memory serves, the video call happened on a pay phone. The theme was “tuck your kids in” from halfway around the world.

There’s one bit that was wrong almost, or perhaps entirely, universally:

Paraphrasing: “The company that will bring it to you? AT&T.”

To be fair (at the time) AT&T's Bell Labs division was the one producing those prototypes. So it may not be AT&T that is wholly responsible for it, but Bell Labs did kickstart most of these. Well, except the phone booths :)

(Also, the alternate interpretation is that AT&T is providing the interconnection necessary to power these innovations, for one the iPhone was introduced by AT&T (mainly because they were the only willing ones to allow Apple to update them independently) so in a more pragmatic sense AT&T did deliver the future. But on the flipside, some might consider it to be cheating.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com