
AT&T 1993 "You Will" Ads - tortilla
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8
======
TomLimoncelli
I worked at AT&T / Bell Labs when those commercials were flooding every show
on TV.

Bell Labs was upset because AT&T made those commercials without consulting us.
A PR company thought up all the ideas. We had zero projects internally working
on such products.

That's why those products came from EZPass, not AT&T; Skype, not AT&T; Apple
iPad, not AT&T.

Even thought it wasn't AT&T that brought those things to market, nearly all of
them do exist today. It is a beautiful thing. I feel lucky to be living in
what my co-workers call 'The freakin Buck-Rogers-would-be-jealous future'.

Tom

PS. Oh, and the one where they guy has a Dick Tracy-style video-phone on his
watch? Well, soon after AT&T bought McCaw Cellular my friends in the cellular
phone communications research area were asked to work up an explanation of why
such a thing can't exist and isn't likely to exist any time soon. It turns out
that after AT&T bought McCaw they (McCaw) was very unhappy to learn that the
wrist-phone was a figment of a marketing person's imagination and not
something actually being developed at Bell Labs. Ooops. I hope they didn't let
themselves get bought by AT&T just because they thought we had that product in
the wings.

~~~
btl
Tom: I was also at the Labs (Research @ MH) when these spots were made.

We were consulted by the PR people before they were shot.

As far as I know, most "predictions" in those spots were based on real
technologies and demos that were running in the Labs at that time. My dept was
directly responsible for two of them.

I do not recall the Dick Tracy watch but the projects behind the books on-
line, video-on-demand and "EZ Pass" were being done at HO and MH.

Others were products or concepts in the pipeline (e.g. fax from a tablet --
remember GO/EO?, tickets from a cash machine -- NCR ATMs).

Some things shown were straight line extrapolations from core technologies
that had existed in the Labs for some time (e.g. driving across the country
without needing a map, video telephony, packet voice/video, etc.)

Much of the really interesting work from Research at the Labs never made it
into real products from AT&T due to various political, business and regulatory
issues.

Many things later got "reinvented" by other firms that were better able to
capitalize on the innovation.

It has been said that any company that can afford an organization like Bell
Labs Research will ignore it.

That was definitely the case for Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.

------
jgrahamc
But does anyone have the spoof version of this made internally at Microsoft?
They paid Tom Selleck to do the voice over. One scene depicted a woman walking
in the surf along a beach. She's wearing a white dress and a big straw hat.
Selleck says: "Have you ever received a fax in your hat?" Cut to fax appearing
from slot in her hat. Then he says "You will".

There were others IIRC and I saw them in Redmond in the mid 1990s.

~~~
tmsh
There's a hat for that.

------
sophacles
I can't decide what gave me more amusement: the stuff they got right
(ipass/ezpass idea, video conferencing and skype like stuff), the stuff they
got wrong (phone booths!, tablet pcs being more than a gimick) or the stuff
they claimed they would do, which they now actively oppose (skype like stuff).

I remember these commercials fondly, as they were a big push to get me into
programming when I was a boy -- such cool and endless possibilities. Of course
back then they were so futuristic, and now they look rather quaint -- who
would want devices that are so big and bulky?

~~~
amalcon
_or the stuff they claimed they would do, which they now actively oppose
(skype like stuff)._

Remember that AT&T isn't actually the same company it was in the 90's.
Depending on whether you're talking about hard lines or mobile, it's either
SBC or Cingular.

~~~
jballanc
Both of which were AT&T before they weren't...before they were again. What
goes around...

------
pohl
...and the company that will bring it to you, will be counting the minutes
until the exclusivity contract with AT&T expires.

~~~
houseabsolute
You really think Apple made a 3+ year exclusivity contract with AT&T? Even in
view of the explosive possibilities of the device? Hmm, it's possible, but it
doesn't seem likely. It's probable that they are continuing to choose to do
business with them for some reason or another.

~~~
portman
Apple did sign a five-year exclusive with AT&T. Sources:

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/confirmed-apple-and-
atand...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/confirmed-apple-and-atandt-
signed-five-year-iphone-exclusivity-de/)

[http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex...](http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex_brief.pdf)

[http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex...](http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Apple_iPhone_Ex_Order.pdf)

~~~
houseabsolute
Shows what I know. :P Why is everyone speculating that they might come out
with a Verizon phone then? Surely this is basically a broken leg on the
possibility of that happening until 2012?

~~~
portman
There was speculation that because the original agreement did not include the
iPad, Apple was under no obligation to give AT&T exclusivity on the iPad, and
that they renegotiated the contract when the iPad was released. Such a
renegotiation could have included an earlier end to exclusivity.

It will take another court case to confirm if that is true, since neither
party comments on the terms of their agreement.

~~~
houseabsolute
Interesting . . . that other court case is entirely possible too with people
complaining about the unlimited bandwidth bait and switch.

------
jcl
One ad in particular that later struck me as prescient was the ~1999 Quest ad
of the guy asking what movies a hotel had: "All rooms have every movie in
every language, anytime, day or night."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ9qcp6Lcno>

~~~
chaosmachine
At the end, the guy says "How is that possible?" and I'm thinking... "The
Pirate Bay".

~~~
megaman821
At first I took that in as a funny statement. Then after a few seconds in just
became sad. Damn media companies suck. Where would they be without Napster and
The Pirate Bay showing them where the pent up demand is/will be?

~~~
sliverstorm
> ... Where would they be...

Squeezing every last cent out of the market

No, seriously. They don't care about fulfilling consumer demand; whatever they
predict will be most profitable is naturally what they will do. They are a
company after all.

------
tortilla
I think in 300 years, people will still know what a fax is because it'll never
go away.

~~~
InclinedPlane
[http://www.thehighdefinite.com/2010/02/the-evolution-of-
the-...](http://www.thehighdefinite.com/2010/02/the-evolution-of-the-fax-
machine/)

------
johns
They should remake these. Imagine we didn't all loathe them for a second, what
would you include if you made them today?

~~~
bluedanieru
I'm a lot more cynical now than I was in the early nineties, so my ideas would
focus mainly on forced biological modifications imposed on us by the ruling
class. (Think stalkers at the end of Half-Life 2, except replace the Combine
with Halliburton.)

"Have you ever been stripped of agency by intrusive mind-control and body-
modification technology and sacrificed any biological dignity you had to serve
at the behest of an omnipotent AI god for the benefit of a handful of
plutocrats? You will..."

------
ghshephard
The whole 'the future is now' hit me last week when we got to the theater, saw
the 5-10 minute line we didn't want to wait in, and purchased the tickets from
my iPhone instead. What hit me was that a) I didn't event really break mu pace
as I was walking into the theater, and b) it didn't even seem that exceptional
a thing to do.

~~~
baskinghobo
And we have 3d hologram without glasses with 3DS and OLED TV's as thin as a
paper and 1gbp/s Google broadband letting you download Blu-Ray movies in less
than 10 seconds yet we live with them today like it's nothing.

~~~
Charuru
Whoa, none of those things are commercially available yet.

Looks like the future is in 2-3 years? :D

