7 ms·

This is the first time I've seen the You Will ads, they're awesome! Modulo some laughable glitches like paying the toll with a cc in the car and phone booth vid

by Jun8 10y ago

This is the first time I've seen the You Will ads, they're awesome! Modulo some laughable glitches like paying the toll with a cc in the car and phone booth video calling. But the fact that the majority of the predictions were spot on makes these oversights even more interesting. Most of what the ads predicted became reality in 10-15 years, i.e. 2003-2008. Where are the ads that predict technology for 2020?

AnOscelot 10y ago
I'm especially interested in how deeply embedded phone booths were to people who should have thought past them. A lot of SF / futurist stuff from the 60s to early 90s thought people would still be tied to fixed locations for telephone and network access. I've always wondered why that was, especially when some form of mobile phones have been around since the 80's, or even earlier with very expensive car radios which could tap into the phone network. I guess the phone booth was such a fixture of the landscape that no one could imagine a world without them.
- shuntress 10y ago
  I find the most interesting aspect of this observation to be the notion that we have a similar present-day blind spot and the associated exercise in predicting what is that blind spot(s).
  - lstamour 10y ago
    Having to use a certain physical device to interact with software? ;-)
  - AnOscelot 10y ago
    You're correct. That's the fun part. What's especially fun is that the blind spot is often something which has already been developed, and didn't sell well in its first iteration, or is common in prototypes and SF / futurist stuff but no one thought it would ever be widely available.
- skybrian 10y ago
  At the time even wired networks couldn't easily carry video, let alone wireless. Video was thought to require enormous bandwidth, and this wasn't far wrong; it's a significant percentage of Internet traffic even today. So it wasn't implausible that video calls would come first to wired networks and be limited to them for quite a while. The early "Internet Superhighway" hype was all about getting broadband in people's homes for delivering video.
  - code_duck 10y ago
    People who have never had an interest in computers for entertainment, but significant interest in watching TV, have historically assumed that advances in the internet would mean some sort of super TV. I suppose this has happened, in the form of Netflix.
- danbruc 10y ago
  Especially given, as a look at the history of mobile phones [1] reveals, that AT&T pioneered commercial mobile phone calls in 1949, 45 years before this ad campaign. The idea of videotelephony came up in 1878 and Germany had an experimental public video telephone service in 1936, AT&T had the Picturephone in 1964. [2] Add to this that mobile audio and video calls have been depicted in science fiction for a long time. Whatever made them pick land line phones over mobile phones for video calls, it probably was more like an oversight or they estimated a longer time horizon for widespread adoption, it certainly was nothing they could not have imagined. Maybe it was even something trivial like easier visualization in the ad. Thinking about this also reminded me of the 2005 movie »The Island« [3] which also feature video call telephone booths and I have this vague feeling that [video call] telephone booths are generally quite common in science fiction movies. But that might just be because you don't have to explain how someone obtained a mobile phone after he just escaped a situation where he lost all personal items. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film)
rocky1138 10y ago
I saw them when they were new and they really did blow my mind. I was ~12 when they came out. I remember I was very excited for that future. Still, am :)
mstade 10y ago
I remember seeing them back in the day, and as a Swede I didn't really get it. I didn't really know what AT&T was, so it just seemed like a very odd link and out of touch with whatever page I just came from. I also remember there were specific apps you could install on your machine that would show you ads, and supposedly you were paid money for having this installed and even more if you actually clicked the ads. Roboclickers became a thing. I never used these, so I don't know if you actually could earn money this way, but I remember seeing them installed on various public computers like in school and the library. I miss the 90s internet. So many things sucked so bad, but so many things were really good. I made lasting friendships with people over IRC. Sending files via FTP seemed like magic, and you could telnet into all sorts of interesting places. Geocities and web rings, I loved this so much – everybody had a site of their own! There was so much potential and it felt like every day you discovered something new, just by browsing around. I remember when blogs became a new thing, in the 00s at some point I think, and everyone and their mom started blogging. I didn't like this very much. So much content was terrible, and mostly meta-content about how to set up your blogs. No one talked best practices when it came to Geocities – it was just good fun – but with blogs it all of a sudden turned so professional for lack of a better term, and boring. At some point as well, you had to start registering accounts everywhere – it was super annoying. The internet is growing up, and it's probably better off for it, but I do miss the naïveté and optimism of the 90s sometimes.
- rsync 10y ago
  "I miss the 90s internet. So many things sucked so bad, but so many things were really good." All these years later and I still have never seen a satire that was so current, so correct and so fascinating as suck.com. It was such a jewel.
  - throwaway2016a 10y ago
    Fun fact... that website is owned by Lycos if you remember them. I used to work at Lycos and occasionally we would consider fun things to do with that site (like let people register subdomains and own "yankees.suck.com" [1]) [1] Fo rthose not from the US or East Coast US. Lycos headquarters was (is?) in Waltham, MA, right outside of Boston and the Boston Red Sox baseball team has a famous rivalry with the New York Yankees.
rsync 10y ago
"This is the first time I've seen the You Will ads, they're awesome! Modulo some laughable glitches like paying the toll with a cc in the car and phone booth video calling. But the fact that the majority of the predictions were spot on makes these oversights even more interesting." You may find it interesting that while those "you will" ads were running, there were t-shirts and bumper stickers at Defcon/Cuervocon/HOPE1, etc., that said things along the lines of: "have you ever had your personal files scanned by a government agency ? You will ... and the people that will bring it to you ..." (and so on - I don't remember the exact wording but it was provocative and it was equally as prescient)
fapjacks 10y ago
I remember these commercials. I remember the kids picking the science fiction movie (like from Netflix) and being so excited about that idea lol.

by Jun8 10y ago

AnOscelot 10y ago

I'm especially interested in how deeply embedded phone booths were to people who should have thought past them. A lot of SF / futurist stuff from the 60s to early 90s thought people would still be tied to fixed locations for telephone and network access. I've always wondered why that was, especially when some form of mobile phones have been around since the 80's, or even earlier with very expensive car radios which could tap into the phone network. I guess the phone booth was such a fixture of the landscape that no one could imagine a world without them.

shuntress 10y ago
I find the most interesting aspect of this observation to be the notion that we have a similar present-day blind spot and the associated exercise in predicting what is that blind spot(s).
- lstamour 10y ago
  Having to use a certain physical device to interact with software? ;-)
- AnOscelot 10y ago
  You're correct. That's the fun part. What's especially fun is that the blind spot is often something which has already been developed, and didn't sell well in its first iteration, or is common in prototypes and SF / futurist stuff but no one thought it would ever be widely available.
skybrian 10y ago
At the time even wired networks couldn't easily carry video, let alone wireless. Video was thought to require enormous bandwidth, and this wasn't far wrong; it's a significant percentage of Internet traffic even today. So it wasn't implausible that video calls would come first to wired networks and be limited to them for quite a while. The early "Internet Superhighway" hype was all about getting broadband in people's homes for delivering video.
- code_duck 10y ago
  People who have never had an interest in computers for entertainment, but significant interest in watching TV, have historically assumed that advances in the internet would mean some sort of super TV. I suppose this has happened, in the form of Netflix.
danbruc 10y ago
Especially given, as a look at the history of mobile phones [1] reveals, that AT&T pioneered commercial mobile phone calls in 1949, 45 years before this ad campaign. The idea of videotelephony came up in 1878 and Germany had an experimental public video telephone service in 1936, AT&T had the Picturephone in 1964. [2] Add to this that mobile audio and video calls have been depicted in science fiction for a long time. Whatever made them pick land line phones over mobile phones for video calls, it probably was more like an oversight or they estimated a longer time horizon for widespread adoption, it certainly was nothing they could not have imagined. Maybe it was even something trivial like easier visualization in the ad. Thinking about this also reminded me of the 2005 movie »The Island« [3] which also feature video call telephone booths and I have this vague feeling that [video call] telephone booths are generally quite common in science fiction movies. But that might just be because you don't have to explain how someone obtained a mobile phone after he just escaped a situation where he lost all personal items. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film)

rocky1138 10y ago

I saw them when they were new and they really did blow my mind. I was ~12 when they came out. I remember I was very excited for that future. Still, am :)

mstade 10y ago

I remember seeing them back in the day, and as a Swede I didn't really get it. I didn't really know what AT&T was, so it just seemed like a very odd link and out of touch with whatever page I just came from. I also remember there were specific apps you could install on your machine that would show you ads, and supposedly you were paid money for having this installed and even more if you actually clicked the ads. Roboclickers became a thing. I never used these, so I don't know if you actually could earn money this way, but I remember seeing them installed on various public computers like in school and the library. I miss the 90s internet. So many things sucked so bad, but so many things were really good. I made lasting friendships with people over IRC. Sending files via FTP seemed like magic, and you could telnet into all sorts of interesting places. Geocities and web rings, I loved this so much – everybody had a site of their own! There was so much potential and it felt like every day you discovered something new, just by browsing around. I remember when blogs became a new thing, in the 00s at some point I think, and everyone and their mom started blogging. I didn't like this very much. So much content was terrible, and mostly meta-content about how to set up your blogs. No one talked best practices when it came to Geocities – it was just good fun – but with blogs it all of a sudden turned so professional for lack of a better term, and boring. At some point as well, you had to start registering accounts everywhere – it was super annoying. The internet is growing up, and it's probably better off for it, but I do miss the naïveté and optimism of the 90s sometimes.

rsync 10y ago
"I miss the 90s internet. So many things sucked so bad, but so many things were really good." All these years later and I still have never seen a satire that was so current, so correct and so fascinating as suck.com. It was such a jewel.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  Fun fact... that website is owned by Lycos if you remember them. I used to work at Lycos and occasionally we would consider fun things to do with that site (like let people register subdomains and own "yankees.suck.com" [1]) [1] Fo rthose not from the US or East Coast US. Lycos headquarters was (is?) in Waltham, MA, right outside of Boston and the Boston Red Sox baseball team has a famous rivalry with the New York Yankees.

rsync 10y ago

"This is the first time I've seen the You Will ads, they're awesome! Modulo some laughable glitches like paying the toll with a cc in the car and phone booth video calling. But the fact that the majority of the predictions were spot on makes these oversights even more interesting." You may find it interesting that while those "you will" ads were running, there were t-shirts and bumper stickers at Defcon/Cuervocon/HOPE1, etc., that said things along the lines of: "have you ever had your personal files scanned by a government agency ? You will ... and the people that will bring it to you ..." (and so on - I don't remember the exact wording but it was provocative and it was equally as prescient)

fapjacks 10y ago

I remember these commercials. I remember the kids picking the science fiction movie (like from Netflix) and being so excited about that idea lol.