AT&T | Ads accurately predicted the future: ‘You Will’ ad campaign 1993-1994

March 15, 2011

These ads featuring eerily familiar (yet-to-be-created technologies) were produced by AT&T and broadcast on mainstream television from 1993-1994.

A savvy YouTuber culled them together in one convenient spot (video above) — “FunkyWitDaSysTm” says: “I could never find a complete compilation of all of these videos, so I put all 7 together and uploaded it for the world. Looking back on these ads, I remember how moved I was when I first saw them. How, when I got to school on Monday morning, kids would be talking about some new ‘You Will’ ad we saw during The Simpsons the night before.

“And now, 17 years later, I see that these commercials were eerily prophetic. Seriously, the only one of these things that I don’t do or haven’t done are faxing from the beach (although I e-mail, mms, and upload to the Web all manner of pics and vids) and use a vioce-activated lock on my apartment door. Webcams, ez-pay, self-checkout, GPS, Wi-Fi/WAN/3G/4G, ATMs for tickets and driver licenses, on-demand video/Tivo, realtime online multi-user video project collaboration, wristwatch cellphones — we have almost everything.

“The only things we don’t actually have are the automated voice-activated software agent (still in the works), fax from the beach (fax is dead), and videophone-booths (instead, video cell phones have existed since about 2003 and may even be in the next iPhone). I was contacted by AT&T corporate; they want to use my video for a presentation. They’re going to upscale the resolution and send me a copy when they’re done. Hopefully, they’ll let me upload it here to replace this one!”