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Not Bad
Thursday, March 5th, 2009Pretty cool how accurate these 1993 predictions turned out to be. Pretty scary that I remember seeing the commercials when they aired.
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I remember those ads… we’ve certainly seen, if not surpassed that stuff (only thing we really don’t have is video payphones, but I’d think that laptop computers with built-in cameras and VOIP over high-speed internet lines would count as surpassing that)
So that’s why Thomas Magnum was such an awesome private investigator…he could predict the future. :)
What’s a phone booth? ;-)
I suppose the biggest mistake is that AT&T hasn’t brought any of it to us…
How the commercial should have went:
Have you ever watched the movie you want, the minute you want? You will. Unless you have Comcast. Then, you will watch crappy direct to cable movies, when the service bothers to work.
Have you ever faxed a message – from the beach? You will. Which means you will never enjoy a real vacation ever again.
Have you ever bought tickets from a cash machine? You will. Oh wait, no you won’t.
Have you ever tucked your badly pixelated and choppy baby from your skype connection? You will. And it will scare your baby.
Hah yeah I remember these too. I remember thinking the video phone booth was really cool. I was around 10 years old at the time.
The best is sending a fax from the beach. Fax.
Predicting how we’ll be able to communicate with wireless video and and driving across the country with a GPS system then seeing it come to life is cool.
Predicting how we’ll all be monitored from the time of birth to the time we die using video surveillance, how we’ll all be tracked in our cars and taxed by the miles driven, how all of our electronic communications will be monitored by telecommunications companies under the guise of “protecting” us from terrorism, and seeing these things come to life — not so cool.
The best part of those prescient commercials there is how they knew everything was going to end up looking like “Blade Runner.” How many times have I been eating some hyper-noodles and contemplating the purchase of a synthetic boa constrictor just to have Edward James Olmos accost me in City Speak, a mishmash of English, Spanish, and Japanese, and thought, “This truly is the future”? Too many to count.
Have you ever download 50 albums’ worth of mp3s and 2 gigabytes of porn jpegs in a couple of hours?
You will.
What is key to note is that, both in the commercial and in real life, the government did not bring those things….
@Michael Chaney:
Maybe not directly. But the “faxing from a beach?” That could be over AT&T Wireless. And, a lot of the technology that’s behind what they showed in these ads is straight out of AT&T Labs (a moment of silence for the death of a technological giant). And if you’ve surfed the web, you’ve “used” Unix servers (AT&T Labs), a transistor (AT&T Labs) and almost assuredly used an AT&T OC circuit to get your webpage.
Umm…actually the government did bring us some of those things. GPS satellites and…you know…the internet.
Have you ever had a police officer barge into your home and shoot your dog? You will.
#12- Yeah, the government laid the foundation for the internet, and yes, the government was responsible for sending up most of the satlellites, but it was capitalism that put that technology to use for us peons. And if the g-ment didn’t lay down that groundwork, it probably wouldn’t have been long before someone in the private sector did.
Sorry, mine could have been better phrased to read “Have you ever seriously considered that police officers might barge into your home and shoot your dog?”
Chuchundra,
By that definition, the government brought us cellular telephones, since modern cell phone technology is based on old military research.
DARPA funded early experimentation with TCP/IP, the culmination of many years of research into non-centralized networks. DARPA did not, nor did any other part of the government, lay down billions of dollars in telecommunications infrastructure, develop hardware layer protocols upon which TCP/IP current runs, develop software layer protocols that rest on top of TCP/IP, nor any other myriad things that make the Internet worthwhile for business and pleasure. Other than those little details, you’re absolutely correct.
With GPS satellites, you might have a better argument, but I won’t be surprised if someone with a better knowledge of the GPS satellite industry might take issue.
GPS was created by the U.S. government, which then gave it away to everyone for free. For technical reasons it is a true public good, and despite the well-deserved cynicism about government we all have here, it’s something we as a nation can be proud of. It was our gift to the world.
I doubt anyone in the GPS industry would take much issue. The up front investment and maintenance costs aren’t trivial. No one would want to end up like the Iridium program (are they making a profit yet?).
Andy, I’m a big Unix/Linux guy, I spend all day working on these machines. I’m aware of AT&T’s history. Their future, on the other hand, not so sure.
I mourn the death of their research.
I’m really pretty sure that woman in the third spot lives in the same apartment building as Deckard, even.
#5 Chance
“Have you ever tucked your badly pixelated and choppy baby from your skype connection? You will. And it will scare your baby.”
I think I just pissed myself
Iridium:
One of their sattelites just suffered a collision over Siberia.
After the initial $Billions in investment, the whole thing was sold for $25 million to a company willing to accept liability for it, and they sell services to the gov’t.
The interesting thing to me, from the phone technology perspective, is that AT&T didn’t really seem to see how big a deal mobile (“cellular”) phones would be. Half the things that didn’t end up happening (like buying movie tickets at an ATM) didn’t happen because you can do that from your cell phone with a credit card and not go to a cash machine.
@ Chance:
that comment was so funny i just repeated it to every single person in my office. kudos on making my day a LOT funnier.
As an aside on the “look at what government has given us” conversation, I think some worthwhile technologies have come, by hook or crook, by way of government research. But, it is really important to consider the impact of “crowding out” by these government projects. In other words, if it looks like the government is going to spend the taxpayers’ money researching something, then private industry is far less likely to invest in similar research. For people unfamiliar with the concept, reasons for this include 1) why should private people spend their money when they can wait and get the results “for free”; 2) it will cost more to do the same research if the government efforts (via government labs, funding of university research, etc.) are gobbling up the researchers who are experts in the field (this is a big deal in emerging technologies where there may only be a handful of people with the skills to do the research); and 3) the ability to get a return on research investment is far less secure when a parallel government project can muddy the waters of intellectual property rights, technology licensing, etc.
Having worked in areas where the ability to get a company to fund research was directly impacted by their hesitation to risk duplicating something the government was doing, this is a very real effect.
And, of course, the benefit of government involvement in things like satellite technology (for GPS or anything else) is a real mixed bag at this point. It can be argued that there was a legitimate need (military or strategic) to have the government initiate the space program to ensure a U.S. presence in space during the cold war. (The legitimacy of that isn’t really my point, since one could also argue that it wasn’t needed.) And, some civilian technology certainly came out of that. But, I think the reality for quite some time now has been that the government monopoly on space launches has slowed down progress in space development. There are several good articles on this, including this one at Cato. Aside from maybe strictly military technology, I think a strong case can be made taxpayers shouldn’t be paying to run a space program at this point.
Have you ever hijacked a thread to do a cheesy reference to a hoary internet meme?
“Any given Imperial Star Destroyer would completely destroy any version of the USS Enterprise without suffering any damge to itself!!!!!!!”
You will.
I have seen working video phones. One of the guys I work with has one. The picture is excellent however it only works in a select network of phones. So he can only use it with other identical devices at the time of set up. Still very cool
What made me chuckle is that i just read that post, watched that video, and made this comment on an iphone at the airport…an at&t product that does almost everything they mentioned in the ads.
What’s interesting to me is the curious scarcity of similar commercials today.
I wonder why?
[You will: lose all the money in your 401K, etc.]
What’s “my” home?
“For technical reasons [GPS] is a true public good” A “public good” is non-excludable. GPS is not a public good.
chance, I’m laughing so hard it hurts … that was good. I have actually seen a kid run away when they saw their parent on a crappy pixelated webcam :)
There were a lot of prescient predictions (I remember looking this up at YouTube a couple of years ago because I remembered the open road tolling one) but what surprises me most is how much they thought ATMs would be involved in our lives. Using them as videophones, buying tickets, etc. They were right on that we could do all of those things in more accessible ways, but how odd that they thought the gateway would be a cash machine.
Have you read Chance’s response to this blog and PISSED YOURSELF?
You will.
Just ask MacGregory!
“For technical reasons [GPS] is a true public good” A “public good” is non-excludable. GPS is not a public good.
So the people that get found by EMS who use GPS are excludable?
Is that Dharma, from Dharma & Greg?
A “public good” is non-excludable. GPS is not a public good.
Yeah, you’re right. GPS is signals coming out of the sky and blanketing the earth. To make it excludable, you’d need to encrypt the signal with a key that changes periodically, and then you’d need an encrypted channel to distribute the decryption keys, and you’d need the key decryption mechanism hidden inside each GPS receiver so people couldn’t share, and you’d need laws to prevent people from reverse-engineering the key decryption…it’s a mess, and it greatly complicates the system, so I figured it was too complex to be feasible. But I forgot that this is how satellite radio works, so yes, GPS can be made excludable…although if satellite radio is our model, it’s not a raging success…
#33
ATM’s were almost magical money machines for a while. It seems logical to expect more magic from something that seems that way already.
@Cynical
Thanks for the insightful response to my question about power/corruption on a thread days past.
“…I am curious about how you don’t believe in natural rights, unless you mean that one must constantly defend them or lose them.”
I mean rights only exist if one is able to defend, provide, or enforce them. You and I can declare the right to not be eaten by tigers (even pass a law), but that tiger is going to eat us and that’ll be the end of that debate.
You asked about Taoism. Libertarianism (and anarchy…IMHO), free markets, Austrian Eco, Taoism (more so than Buddhism and Confucianism)…all have dramatic, consistent similarities. I urge any libertarian/anarchist/Austrian to also investigate Taoism.
@windy #17
“GPS was created by the U.S. government, which then gave it away to everyone for free.”
Love this! A slight rewrite is needed tho’…
GPS was created by the US government at a taxpayer expense of billions of dollars along with thousands of other research projects costing billions of dollars (most of which never returned anything significant or were obsolete once completed). They then claimed GPS could not be made publicly available (for security reasons) until lobbyists bought massive amounts of blow and hookers for politicians to force it to be released to the public. Don’t even mention that R&D isn’t a function of government.
So they spent more money on GPS than anyone in their right mind would (because they don’t care about ROI…every budget is blue sky). Take a million from each grandma and give back a shiny new toaster. Claim victory because we’ll never get to see the free market alternatives that the government stomped out.
GPS supports one of my favorite sayings: “Who will fund a service no one cares enough about, wants, or is too expensive? Government!”
Who’s going to now post that NASA is the greatest invention machine in the world because there’s no way private enterprise would’ve put a man on the moon in the 60′s. Ahhh…the cost of national pride!! Who’s up for a man on Mars saluting the flag?! No cost is too much!
NOTHING the government provides is for “free”.
@Boyd #40
My understanding is that GPS was created for military purposes, to keep detached units from getting lost and to improve the accuracy of indirect fires, aircraft bombing runs, SSBN missiles, cruise missiles, etc., and national defense is clearly a public good, to the extent that we wouldn’t even need the federal government if it weren’t for national defense.
Once you have GPS for the military, the cost of making it free for everyone else isn’t very high.
#35 Tommy,
Excludability has a specific economic definition and refers only the ability to prevent people who have not paid for the service from using it. GPS is a “club good” (other examples include cable television and telephone lines). GPS, like CATV, is non-rivalrous (meaning that one person using it does not diminish another’s capacity to consume), but excludable (those who don’t pay for it cannot use it).
Well, non-rivalrous at least until congestion occurs. The principle is the same, though: everyone (subject to technical limits) who paid for cable TV can use it without diminishing the capacity for others who have paid for it to use it.
Other examples include movie theatres and access to copyrighted media.
“To make it excludable, you’d need to encrypt the signal with a key that changes periodically, and then you’d need an encrypted channel to distribute the decryption keys….”
Plans and procedures are already in place (have been since the beginning) to shut off civilian access at the flip of a switch. The GPS system is for military use, and they’re kind enough to let civilians tag along as well. They can exclude ALL civilians, I’m pretty sure they could just exclude some.
And vice-versa.
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