The idea for this post comes to me via Marques Brownlee who is one of the most tech savvy individuals on the Internet today.  Brownlee has his own YouTube channel and no one can go wrong by spending time watching his informative videos.

Between 1993 and 1994, communications giant AT&T broadcasted seven thirty-second commercials narrated by Tom Selleck that showed where they thought we would be technology-wise “soon.”  The accuracy of the “You Will” ad campaign is uncanny.  I’ve included Brownlee’s video essay on one of the commercials in this post.

Allow let me to add this: everything detailed in the AT&T commercial that Brownlee discusses, I have done with my Samsung Smartphone. Now, no one is saying that AT&T invented all or any of the technology shown in these commercials.  But the technology shown is something we take for granted today.

I recently drove from northern Georgia to Baltimore, Maryland using only the turn-by-turn navigational app on my phone.  I visited people I had not seen in several years, driving directly to their homes guided only by the voice instructions I received from my phone. Using my phone, I showed these people pictures of my children and grandchildren; pictures that were not really on my phone, but rather located in the “cloud” on a server hundreds or thousands of miles away from me at that moment.  I visited a national cemetery (again aided by my navigational app) and photographed, using my phone’s camera, my father and mother’s grave site and forwarded those pictures (via text message) to my son located 3000 miles away.

These capabilities are things we all take for granted today, but didn’t exist to this level of maturity 20 years ago. These AT&T commercials are a fascinating look back through the time machine of the internet. It was a trip I enjoyed. Four of the seven AT&T commercials can be seen here. Mr. Brownlee’s video essay is below.