

AT&T's predictions of 2014 in 1994 were surprisingly accruate - gameshot911
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnQ8EkwXJ0

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dm2
One of the more interesting ones was the renewing a drivers license at a
kiosk. Right now you either renew it online from home or wait in a
ridiculously long line to talk to a human. This shows that some tasks are not
practical to completely automate, at least until we invent very smart machines
or better wireless / video chat type scenarios. I don't really see why DMV
employees can't be remotely located and have a TV monitor and less employees
at the location.

The other inventions were spot on for the most part. Probably because the
ideas are fairly easy, it's the execution and bringing to market that are
difficult. The components and infrastructure just wasn't there to make a lot
of those things happen without the internet, which was not as common as it is
now (20 years later). The internet will continue to change the way we live,
there are still lots of potential to better automate processes and make the
world more efficient. It's getting kind of hard to imagine the next 20 years
though. We've come so far in the past 20 that the things that are left are the
really hard problems (space travel, re-arranging molecules and atoms at will,
advanced medicine).

One problem with a more efficient and automated world is the loss of jobs.
Hopefully all of this innovation will also create as many jobs as it removes.
Then we can also start moving towards a post-scarcity society, like socialism
but more of a Utopian society that will actually work. We just need molecular
re-arrangers to be as common as a printer and BAM, then the only things we
will have to worry about are running out of land and accidentally creating a
virus, parasite, or robot that kills everyone.

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elleferrer
That's insane. I wonder what they already have in store for the next 20 years.

Reminds me of this article I just read, "Ray Kurzweil: This is your future"
[http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/business/ray-kurzweil-
future-o...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/business/ray-kurzweil-future-of-
human-life/index.html)

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crozewski
I wonder how many of those innovations at the time AT&T was involved in
bringing to market.

Also interesting to see the analog nature of things prevalent in the ads-- how
the images flicker into place on the screens.

