
AT&T 1993 “You Will” Ads [video] - tosh
https://youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8
======
delish
As with everything, there's an emacs extension for it : ).

;;; youwill.el --- generate meaningless marketing hype

[http://www.splode.com/~friedman/software/emacs-
lisp/src/youw...](http://www.splode.com/~friedman/software/emacs-
lisp/src/youwill.el)

I got:

have you ever been forced by your TV to eat peaches? or been transported to an
alternate reality where you lost your piglet? you will. and the company that
will bring it to you: AT&T

~~~
tosh
This is hilarious. Thx!

------
mazelife
It's kind of funny to me that every single one of these more or less came true
with one notable exception: "Have you ever carried your medical history in
your wallet?" As it stands today, at least in the US, most people's medical
history is still fragmented across dozens of proprietary, non-interoperable
EMR systems or locked away in paper charts in doctors' offices. I can't think
of a single company that's tried to play in the personal health portal
space—Google included—that hasn't failed utterly.

Digitization of health data has increased massively since 93' of course, but
the landscape is still completely Balkanized and there is a growing body of
clinicians who believe healthcare IT is actively making healthcare worse.[1]
Put another way, the idea of a complete, centralized, _useful_ medical medical
history being available for everyone in the US still seems like a pipe dream.
Interesting discussion to be had about how, in this particular industry,
progress has been so slow...

[1][https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-
ha...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their-
computers) and
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/magazine/heal...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/magazine/health-
issue-what-we-lose-with-data-driven-medicine.html) for example

~~~
CoolGuySteve
In Ontario 15 years ago, my health card had a mag stripe they could swipe. But
I don't know if it pulled up my medical file or if that stripe is still on the
health cards.

Part of it, along with my photo, a hologram, and 5 year expiry date, was
really meant to prevent insurance fraud from out of province people. ie:
Americans.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Ontario health cards still have the mag stripe, 2D bar code, and photo
hologram. I don't think they've changed since the old red and white cards that
didn't have photos.

------
themagician
This was right at end of of life for AT&T as an innovator, but I don't think
people really appreciate just how much AT&T did for technology. Sure, they had
a monopoly. Government backed, really. But you can trace just about every
piece of modern tech back to Bell Labs or someone who worked there. The
transistor itself, UNIX, the C programming language, the laser, CCDs, solar
panels, and the list goes on. I don't think there's ever been a company before
or since that has done so much.

I can't help but wonder what a modern day Bell Labs would be able to do.

~~~
rayiner
I’m convinced AT&T did all those things _because_ it was a monopoly. Look at
what happened to Xerox after the DOJ killed it’s copier monopoly by forcing it
to license its patents. PARC rapidly went downhill. Companies in highly
competitive markets can’t really afford capital intensive innovation.

~~~
tormeh
This. Competition and rational buyers with perfect information will move
prices close to production costs plus risk compensation. There's no room for
anything more than incremental innovation and quick wins at those kinds of
companies.

------
lurquer
"Have you ever watched a twenty-six year old commercial on your phone? You
will."

~~~
spaceflunky
"Have you ever argued with thousands of complete strangers in another country
while you sit on the toilet? You will."

------
rudolfwinestock
One Usenet signature[0] that I saw during the mid-1990s was "Have you ever
taken credit for something that hasn't even been invented yet? You will."

[0] Yes, I'm dating myself.

------
BrandonMarc
I REMEMBER THOSE! Wow.

Really, that campaign is a great way of showing younger folk just what they're
taking for granted, and what used to be thought of as "futuristic", and how
close the present matches the predicted future.

~~~
mojomark
Me too, and that's a good point. Judging from comnents above, I don't think
viewers today (who weren't used to life before the internet and mobile) don't
really grasp the level of foresight required at the time to be so spot on
(with the exception of the phone booth still being a thing).

I'm sure there's another name for it, but I call it the "Bob Dylan Effect".
Basically, if you were born after or too young to remember something having a
revolutionary and influential in scope as Dylan was (for music and culture),
the impact becomes so woven into the fabric of life that in the wake of the
revolution, it's difficult for most people who didn't live through it to grasp
the magnutude of the impact.

I have a lot of friends who hear Dylan and say "meh, sounds like the same old
folk music, I don't get what the big deal is about". But that's the point!
Where do you think that sound and approach to music came from? Seems to be the
same case with the internet and mobile. Everything seems obvious now, so the
ideas of people who really were ahead of their time, simply seem (to some
people) like obvious inevitabilities, when that's not at all the case.

Note that something like the moon landing doesn't fall into this "Bob Dylan
affect". The moon landing today is still as captivating as it was when it
happened. That's because the space race didn't persist, and people aren't
taking vacations to Moon City, so we're not really in the wake of a space
revolution. But, you bet your sweet bippy that in 80 years, well after Musk
gets humans to Mars, there will be someone saying "meh, what's the big deal -
of course we were going to get to Mars"... when in reality, without a
visionary like Musk, we'd still be floating around the planet and moon poking
weightless blobs of water (a.k.a. videos I can't stop watching once I start).

~~~
pvg
_don 't really grasp the level of foresight required at the time_

Is there anything much to grasp there, though? These are fairly
straightforward near-future sort of extrapolation of then-existing technology,
for an ad. "A colour Newton that actually works and you can use on the beach"
is hardly some mind-blowing prediction nor was it intended to be.

~~~
xsmasher
At a time where it took hours to download a picture, pagers were more popular
than cell phones, WML/WAP wasn't even a dream yet, and e-Commerce did not
exist, these ads were pretty prescient.

~~~
pvg
Sure, but they are prescient in a completely obvious way. The bit I'm
questioning is the 'level of foresight'. 'Faxing from the beach' required
exactly zero foresight.

------
bane
These kinds of future looking ideas are always terribly wrong in the small
details, so its important to look at what the general prediction was. The
thinkers behind these things had to settle a vague predictive idea like "video
phones" on some kind of physical representation in order to ground it enough
to make the advertisement, but didn't know enough about the small bits the
future would hold to make it _exactly_ what's come to pass.

So you can sort of score how good future predictions are based on these broad
ideas even if the particulars didn't work out. "People will generally start to
commute on personal flying vehicles" is one that hasn't really come to pass in
any form, so the it's a bad prediction. But these ones are really stellar.

I think even more importantly, these ones were so provocative and the
grounding in the particulars was so plausible that an entire generation of
engineers grew up remembering these video and trying to make the prediction
self-fulfilling. Thus these videos were both drivers of innovation as well as
prophecy. There's an overly academic book on this topic with a great title
that I think captures this well: "The Dreams our Stuff is Made of"

The biggest prediction here that underlies _all_ of these predictions is that
there is going to be a global communications capability that enables most of
the things in the ads -- and it was going to be so ubiquitous, commoditized
and possess so much bandwidth and low latency that anybody could use it
anywhere. In 1993, this wasn't a forgone conclusion -- Windows 95 didn't even
ship with a built-in TCP/IP stack.

The obvious thing they missed was miniaturization and device convergence. Most
of the activities here involve people still going to fixed or installed
devices -- the smartphone was never considered.

~~~
kevstev
> Windows 95 didn't even ship with a built-in TCP/IP stack.

Are you sure about that? Win 3.11 did not, you had to install trumpet winsock,
but win95 did have winsock.dll shipped with it IIRC. You may have had to
separately install it, but it was on your handy win95 cd-rom IIRC

~~~
ingenium
If I remember correctly, the original release did not. Only in 95a or 95b did
it have it.

------
pcurve
I’m over 40 so I remember this watching this as high schooler who grew up on
Hayes and usrobotics courier modems dialing out to local bbs in search of free
pr0n.

Anyway... these appear pretty prescient. However given technologies available
in 1993, I actually find almost all of these pretty laughable as examples.

Would’ve been cool if it were made in 1973 though.

~~~
jedberg
There was a certain sense of accomplishment when you had to wait 30 minutes
for a single jpg to download...

------
mti27
I remember when these commercials came out, they seemed annoying - just
corporate hype with nothing real. There was even a parody on some show (SNL?)
that made fun of them: "Have you ever been seduced by your toaster? You will."
Of course the real predictor from 1993 was Demolition Man:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnSIOlF132w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnSIOlF132w)

------
djmips
This looks like some valid and interesting info on these commercials.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/01/04/how-atts-
you-w...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/01/04/how-atts-you-will-ads-
from-1993-predicted-the-future-with-surprising-accuracy/#7de331f633b5)

~~~
masonic
It's hilarious that there are ultimately _three_ overlay ads obscuring the
text of that article.

------
beefman
Posted to YouTube 13 years after they aired, 13 years ago.

------
jedieaston
Have you ever had your phone gain access to a "5G" network with a simple
software update? Or had that same update not actually increase the speed of
your network traffic? You will. And the company that'll bring it to you? AT&T.

------
ChuckCottrill37
AT&T is the combination of several "Baby Bells", including Bellsouth. I worked
at Bellsouth (Advanced Networks) in the early-mid 90's. Bellsouth was a
technology leader among the Baby Bells (but were too cautious buying other
Bell's). Anyway, there were a ton of innovations at Bellsouth, but Marketing
was always one of the biggest drivers, as was Finance. And that is what
prevented 'Fiber to the Home', and so many other innovations. Tons of great
ideas never escaped the labs, because there was no vision for the market, or
fear that one technology would cannibalize other existing revenue streams.

------
bitwize
"driven cross country without stopping for directions", "paid a toll without
slowing down", "unlocked your front door with the sound of your voice",
"attended a meeting in your bare feet", and "watched the movie you wanted,
when you wanted" all turned out pretty spot on. I'd be willimg to give them
"sent a fax from the beach" if an emailed PDF counts as a fax.

------
rmason
Anyone think it strange that a phone company wouldn't see the emergence of the
smartphone?

Guffawed when I saw those phone booth picture phones.

~~~
mdasen
The tablet that they show sending a fax from the beach is essentially a
smartphone. The thing is that smartphones weren't popular until Apple even
though they had existed.

Palm, Nokia/Symbian, Danger, and Microsoft had been pushing smartphones before
the iPhone came out. BlackBerry was pushing non-touch smartphones as well. The
issue is that none of them really had a compelling user experience before
Apple came along. You can say that the iPhone was obvious, but no one else saw
to use capacitive touchscreens at the time. Even after the iPhone came out,
everyone thought that the lack of a physical keyboard was Apple's hubris and
would be their downfall. Windows Mobile, Symbian, and PalmOS didn't integrate
a first-class web browsing experience. Heck, I remember Windows Mobile
emphasizing scroll bars rather than the natural movement that Apple introduced
with the iPhone, never mind pinch to zoom.

Apple came along and showed everyone what the point of having a smartphone in
your pocket was. You'd have the best music experience. You'd have the full
internet for any question you'd ever have. You'd have maps. You'd have a great
photos experience. Part of that is that they recognized that the capacitive
technology they'd been using in iPods and trackpads for years could be used as
part of a fuller operating system. Part of it is that they really spent a lot
of time figuring out how people could use a touchscreen well. Others had just
tried to take desktop UI concepts and put them on a touch device.

AT&T saw the emergence of the smartphone. Heck, Microsoft, Palm,
Nokia/Symbian, BlackBerry, Danger, and even Google tried to build it before
Apple (Google was targeting Symbian and had to "go back to the drawing board"
when the iPhone was introduced). They all missed the key affordances that
would drive consumer adoption. Google's pre-iPhone prototypes were basically
BlackBerry/Symbian competitors. Microsoft wanted scroll bars, a start menu,
and windows. Even after the iPhone, many tried pushing devices with keyboards:
Moto Droid, HTC's first Android device, the Palm Pre, etc. It's not about
saying "we'll have X in the future!" People saw smartphones/tablets. Heck,
Star Trek had tablets in late 80s, but they didn't need them to be usable,
just props. People just never figured out how to make them compelling for
users before Apple did.

~~~
msla
> The tablet that they show sending a fax from the beach is essentially a
> smartphone.

Except for the fact it's sending a fax.

Smartphones don't send faxes, but they could. They don't because they exist in
a world where faxing someone something is a niche application, and
approximately nobody would buy a smartphone based on how well it faxes. The
technological culture is different. The world has changed in more ways than
just "We can stick a good computer in your pocket and power it all day long"
and AT&T didn't predict that.

I realize I'm partially repeating some elements of your comment, but I do have
my own point to make here: In looking at history, avoid Presentism. Try to see
the past on its own terms, not through the lens of the modern day. That is a
learned skill, and not having it is shown by crediting people in the past with
predicting things they never thought of.

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
I built the wireless modem that sent that fax. People often forget how
primitive cell connections were. AMPS was the system, and the A or B ('B' as
in 'Bell') carriers were your only choices. PenPoint OS had the notion of
sporadic / opportunistic connections, and that's how one did email -- batched
it up so when you'd plug in the RJ-11 you'd send/receive in batches.

The wireless (cellphone) capability would add a new dimension: on-the-go
connectivity. In theory.

One of our sales guys was going to NYC and asked for us to load 'the latest
build' and against our best judgement, we did. He reported back next day to us
that he had successfully send a FAX to a potential client from the back seat
of his cab. We all thought "What the heck! We never said that would work!" and
then, "Oh, wow, looks like that worked!"

------
tosh
I wonder what today’s version of this campaign would be like. Ideas?

~~~
DamnInteresting
Have you ever taken a nap in your car...on your way to work?

Have you ever eaten a steak...that didn't come from an animal?

Have you ever had an iMax movie theater...in your eyeglasses?

~~~
fimdomeio
or for the less optimistic:

Have you have missed talking to a real humam being face to face, you will.

Have you have missed going outside without a radiation suit, you will.

~~~
ryandrake
Have you ever been denied a loan because of a tweet?

Has your car ever changed its route home to pass by businesses who bid the
most?

Have you ever paid more for rent because of your search history?

You will!

------
sxates
Qwest had similar commercials in 1999 [0]. "Every movie ever made any time"
was kind of mind blowing at the time - then 10 years later it happened.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ9qcp6Lcno](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ9qcp6Lcno)

~~~
revel
then almost as soon as it became possible everything got segmented into
product groups by distributors

What a shame

------
waynecochran
Gotta love Tom Selleck's voice.

------
DonHopkins
Have you ever ordered McDonald's food from a feces covered touch screen?

------
doitLP
Wow I think the video caller is a young Jenna Elfman.

~~~
jgrahamc
It is.

------
dmitryminkovsky
These are mentioned a few times in the Internet History Podcast [0]. Glad to
finally see them.

(AT&T also ran the first major banner ads on the web, on Hotwired, also
extensively covered on the Internet History Podcast)

[0]
[http://www.internethistorypodcast.com](http://www.internethistorypodcast.com)

------
kxrm
AT&T of that era could see all these futuristic possibilities, but couldn't
see it's own demise.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation#Acquisition...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation#Acquisition_by_SBC)

------
myself248
I haven't even clicked the link. And my mind plays back...

"And the company that'll bring it to you is AT&T"

That's still etched into my mind all these years later. I've made jokes about
this call-and-response as recently as a few weeks ago.

VERY effective campaign.

------
scarface74
It made me think about the hosts of the Today show discussing the Internet in
1994.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJku_CSyNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJku_CSyNg)

------
phillco
> You will

True

> And the company that will bring it to you? AT&T

Less true

------
rocky1138
These commercials had a profound impact on me as a kid. I was 10 in 1993, so I
was at just the right age to be thinking about the future for the first time.

------
olivermarks
The mobile carriers have cleaned up running the internet data toll roads...we
pay for bandwidth and 'free' content...

------
slim
I'm unable to predict similar changes on our way of life happening in the
2019-2045 timeframe

------
_bxg1
Love me some retro-futurism

------
samgranieri
I remember watching this in grade school. Ah, memories

------
brandonmenc
Music by Peter Gabriel.

