You Will: AT&T’s eerily accurate predictions of modern day technologies
In 1993, AT&T ran a number of commercials in which Tom Selleck (or someone who sounds remarkably like him) predicted the kinds of crazy things we’d later just take for granted in our everyday lives, like in-car GPS to help us navigate our way, pay road tolls without cash, TV movies on demand and so on. (thanks Will!)
If you hadn’t seen these before but thought they seemed a little familiar, it may be because Universal Studios parodied them in their Terminator 2 3D attraction pre-show video.
Will September 22nd, 2009 8:35 am
It is quite scary how accurate their predictions were. Back in 1993 I don’t think I even had internet access at home, or if I did it was via some shakey 14.4 modem.
I’m guessing that AT&T were making their predictions based on current research, but even so it’s very impressive. I mean, think of all the scientific research and technological development Tomorrow’s World (http://tinyurl.com/n6llsk) covered and it’s clear to see that 99% remains just pipe dreams.
Now we’ve all seen in-car SatNav replete with customisable voices (mine is the voice of John Cleese), we can pay the congestion charge automatically, and mobile devives and applications are ubiquitous in modern life. Perhaps what’s more scary is what seemed like science fiction back in 1993 is now science fact.
I’d love to see what AT&T would come up with now, the possibilities are infinite when you consider things like Microsoft’s project NATAL for the XBox 360 or their ‘Surface’ platform which looks like something out of Minority Report.
Robots anyone?