That's what I meant. I wouldn't say "any" future commercials... but man, some of these things were spot on. 1993 was still before the internet became truly mainstream, and things like GPS, wireless internet, and video-phone/cell phone were still fledgling technologies. Hell, wireless internet only became en vouge about 6-7 years ago... and broadband internet only 5-6 years before that.
1993 was a pretty long time ago; certainly in technology years. Those commercials are remarkable when you consider people were using compuserve/prodigy/14.4k modems etc to connect to the "internet." If you can really call what we had in 1993 THE internet.
At the time of this commercial, they had all the technologies to do this except ubiquitous connectivity and bandwidth. ATT knew that they would have plumbing someday to do this so it wasn't a stretch. What's really amazing is that the marketing department actually thought of use case scenarios that the market really wanted.
Bell Labs was a great at developing technology but through the 1990's AT&T wasn't doing a very good job at running their company. In fact they spun off Bell Labs as Lucent Technology which I think went belly up or was bought out. The marketing guys were smart of enough to see the applications of the coming internet revolution but the business wasn't run well enough to prosper off of it. IF they were truly Nostradamus' SBC wouldn't have bought out AT&T in a practical fire sale.
Also the stuff AT&T was predicting in those commercials wasn't that uniquely visionary as many others including Microsoft were predicting things along those lines then too.
Were those scenarios really that difficult to think of? I mean video conferencing, wireless communications, etc.? Go watch Star Trek episodes from the 60's, or heck, any sci-fi movie from the 40's or 50's. Hell, go watch some Jetsons episodes. lol. Let's not give marketing departments kudos yet.
sending documents over a wireless network? think of the consequenses it has. it has almost completely replaced fax machines. it has destroyed the postal service and other document shippers. and its killing the paper industry. I know those are all negatives but think of the impact it is having on industry and consumers.that's where we've come a long way. who cares if you can watch someone over a video live, its mainly a novelty.
