AT&T 1993 "You Will" Ads

Interesting historic piece. the TV movie is called Hyperland (1990): link Similar videos with good visions can be found from AT&T (the big old one), Microsoft and Apple - all from ca 1990. Apple Knowledge Navigator TV advertisement (1987): link AT&T 1993 "You will" TV advertisement: ▶ this video , link "Information at your Fingertips" Microsoft presentation at COMDEX 1995: link "Microsoft Network" (MSN 1.0) TV advertisement (1995): link

We've had the prospect of video chat for decades. 2001 A Space Odyssey showed us that it would be the de facto way to talk to our families. Tom Selleck promised us in the early 1990s (▶ this video) that AT&T would bring it to us. And when we finally got it, most people said, "meh". Almost all chat platforms have some sort of video integration, and for the most part, its acceptance is lukewarm. Perhaps it's because it doesn't work amazingly well? Perhaps its because people really don't want to have to get dressed to have a conversation? Perhaps I'm just not in the right crowd?

Bill Gates's vision was about a "wallet PC", "information highway" and software based "personal agents". You can think of smartphone with BitCoin wallet, 3G web connection, Siri meets Watson. He hoped Microsoft's "pen-based computing" (later Pocket-PC/WinCE) would get traction. Microsoft Bob (from Gates wife) and Office agents (link) flopped. The Microsoft Network 1.0 (short MSN 1.0) integrated in Windows 95 (was a serious Web competitor based on Win32 controls and Explorer as browser instead of HTML and Mosaic/Internet Explorer 1) flopped. The second edition of the book features the Internet/web instead of "information highway". Bill Gates vision can be seen in the Comdex 1995 video: link (shows the "wallet PC") General Magic was definitely a competitor. AT&T was on the General Magic bandwagon, see their TV ad: ▶ this video (triva: Jenna Elfman of Dharma & Greg in her first role in 0:48)