To your point, AT&T's "You Will" commercials started airing in 1993 and present both an optimistic and fairly accurate view of what the future would look like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZ-667CEdo

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iyn 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I didn't know about these ads, thanks for sharing! Can't imagine how people reacted to that when they aired — the things they described sound so "normal" today, I wonder if it was seen as far fetched, crazy or actually expected.

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EA 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

In these commercials, it wasn't the technology itself but the ease of access and visualized integration of these technologies into the commoners' everyday lives that was the new idea.

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skywhopper 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I was in my late teens at the time. My memory is that I felt like the tech was definitely going happen in some form, but I rolled my eyes heavily at the idea that AT&T was going to be the company to do make it happen.

If you’re unfamiliar, the phone connectivity situation in the 80s and 90s was messy and piecemeal. AT&T had been broken up in 1982 (see https://www.historyfactory.com/insights/this-month-in-busine...), and most people had a local phone provider and AT&T was the default long-distance provider. MCI and Sprint were becoming real competition for AT&T at the time of these commercials.

Anyway, in 1993 AT&T was still the crusty old monopoly on most people’s minds, and the idea that they were going to be the company to bring any of these ideas to the market was laughable. So the commercials were basically an image play. The only thing most people bought from AT&T was long distance service, and the main threat was customers leaving for MCI and Sprint. The ads memorable for sure, but I don’t think they blew anyone’s mind or made anyone stay with AT&T.

	▲	mercutio2 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		We’re the same age, and I had exactly the same reaction. AT&T and the baby bells were widely loathed (man I hated Ameritech…), so the idea they would extend their tentacles in this way was the main thing I reacted to. The technology seemed straightforwardly likely with Dennard scaling in full swing. I thought it would be banks that owned the customer relationship, not telcos or Apple (or non-existent Google), but the tech was just… assume miniaturization’s plateau isn’t coming for a few decades. Still pretty iconic/memorable, though!

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3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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Arn_Thor 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Wow, that genuinely gave me goosebumps. It is incredible to live in a time where so much of that hopeful optimism came to pass.