In the year 2000

Whenever someone complains about the lack of flying cars or hoverboards or whatever, I think about those AT&T ads from the early '90s where Tom Selleck told us about all the cool shit we were going to have at some unspecified future date, courtesy of AT&T. They made quite an impression on me as a kid, but I hadn't actually seen them for years, until they were mentioned in a tweet yesterday from @suemarks by way of @RossHero.

Surprisingly, they were pretty on the mark in their predictions. (Well, not so much in terms of set design. Check out their idea of the grocery store of the future. Yeah, Safeway looks just like that.) Certainly more so than that Qwest broadband commercial from ten or so years ago, back when everyone was still excited about the internet, where the weary traveler checks into a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere and asks what sort of entertainment options were available, to which the bored girl working the front desk says something like, "Every movie...ever made...on your TV." I'm still waiting for that shit.

What's interesting is that AT&T got most of the overall concepts right (i.e., video phones), but some of the details are just laughably bad (i.e., video phones in phone booths). Here are some other misses in these ads that, in hindsight, seem quaint, if not ridiculous.

"Have you ever...sent someone a fax from the beach?" - So close! But not quite. AT&T correctly anticipated the rise of tablets, but still thought we'd be sending faxes? This isn't nearly as bad as Back to the Future II's wall-mounted fax machines, but it seems like a failure of imagination on AT&T's part.

"Have you ever...paid a toll without slowing down?" - Were EZ-Passes really that hard to anticipate? Imagine having to drive around with a credit card reader mounted on your dashboard. I think I'd rather just slow down and pay cash.

"Have you ever...bought concert tickets at a cash machine?" - Check out that spiffy 3-D interface. Now go to Ticketmaster. Where did we go wrong?

"Have you ever...carried your medical history in your wallet?" - I'm cringing just thinking about that one. "Oh, no! I lost my wallet. And, uh, my entire medical history. Shit." People are worried about online medical records being hacked into now. Imagine if they were all contained on one easy-to-read card that could be lost or stolen.

"Have you ever...gotten a phone call on your wrist?" - I know we all loved Dick Tracy, but is there a single more impractical idea than a phone attached to your wrist? Try having an imaginary conversation on an imaginary watch-phone and see how long before it feels awkward and uncomfortable. Even now, I recently read in Wired or somewhere that some company is trying to make the idea work. It's not going to happen, guys.

"Have you ever...renewed your drivers license at a cash machine?" - Geez, AT&T was really big on us using ATMs for all kinds of things, weren't they? They probably would have been disappointed to learn that 20 years later, we still use them exclusively to get cash from. And given the rise of electronic payments, not really even so much that anymore. But this one is noteable for two reasons: First, we're still waiting in long lines at the DMV. At most, we can renew at home online, but that's it. It's not like a new license pops out of our modem. Second, what are the odds that both actors in that segment (Wallace Langham and Traylor Howard) went on to be...well, not big stars, but at least achieve "Hey, it's that guy!" status?

"Have you ever...had an assistant who lived in your computer?" - This one was the biggest reach. It's so out there, I can't believe even AT&T's most optimistic people thought this was a possibility. They basically promised artificial intelligence. Describe Google and StubHub to someone in the '90s after they saw this ad, and they'd probably be disappointed. "You mean I'll have to do the typing myself? Why can't the computer just do it?" I'm surprised AT&T didn't also have the computer make the woman breakfast and give her a massage.