Looking Ahead to the Information Age in 1985: AT&T Archives
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- čas přidán 20. 06. 2012
- See more from the AT&T Archives at techchannel.att.com
A semi-futurist film about the growth and potential of computers and communications combining in The Information Age. The film puts forth that developments like digital television, speech recognition, and speedy networks might combine in ways to help humanity that wasn't believed possible before the 1980s.
This 1985 film contains an early use of the term "information superhighway" - the origins of the term are still unclear. Al Gore claims to have used the term "information highway" in a presentation around 1978, artist Nam Jun Paik referred to a "superhighway" of data back in 1974, and Ralph Lee Smith's book on cable television from 1972 used the term "electronic communications highway" in the subtitle. But, until we digitize every piece of print and voice matter for the 20th century, this reference, from Newsweek in 1983, may have to stand as the earliest specific reference (and yes, it is entirely about AT&T's largest 1980s projects):
"This year alone, AT&T will install 15,000 miles of glass fibers in commercial systems across the country. Two information superhighways being built of fiber-optic cable will link Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in a 776-mile system on the East Coast, and Sacramento, Oakland and Los Angeles on the West Coast. In 1984 the video and voice signals for television broadcasts of the Los Angeles Olympics will race through fiber-optic systems buried beneath the city streets to a transmitter; from there, they will be beamed to a satellite parked in geosynchronous orbit above the earth and relayed around the globe. Light-wave communications may also tie together networks of computers, printers and video screens in the office of the future; the new AT&T headquarters building under construction in New York is being fiber-wired for future services. But the most ambitious project so far is a transatlantic fiber-optic cable to be built by 1988 that could significantly cut the cost of communications between the United States and Europe."
Interviews in this film include:
* Robert Jastrow, NASA
* George Stibitz, Dartmouth (formerly of Bell Labs)
* William Synnott, 1st National Bank of Boston
Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ - Věda a technologie
1:45 “homes and offices coming together more and more” don’t know if that was really a good thing or not. It’s crazy watching this now
15:31 "and i think the people that do the best job of producing quality, low cost products will be the winners" ... i hope it didn't take you too long to come to that conclusion.
A telephone in my car? Unheard of!
Looked like he was talking into a shoe.
The information superhighway : Mukbang videos , people uploading selfies and sharing what they did over the weekend on social media
and porn... so much porn.
Could have been worse, we could be ruled over by a powerful A.I. just like in the 1970 movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. 🤖
“A good idea,” is to make “information free,” so we have the ability to make “informed decisions.” Nghi T.
"With the tools of the Information Age, we look forward to a richer, longer and more interesting life."
(Dies of a stroke while surfing Reddit)
They say that suicide is strongest in White Males mid-40s to early 50s in age.
Weve been replaced by the Third World labour. No surprises there.
It all came true...... CONGRATS ATT!!
This has to be the most accurate of these "future prediction" videos I've seen.
Fascinating fact: the guy doing the presentation is Robert Trump who is brother of Donald Trump who many years later ran for president and won with the help of the technology this guy was talking about.
lol no that's Robert Trumbull
1985. I remember the OMG Japan is building a 5th generation AI powered computer scare. it even affected the Soviet Union and led to some interesting projects their (START/KRONUS)
I hear a sample of Kraftwerk's "The Robots" at 11:30 :)
Electric café
The old days, may we know them again . In the meantime, let’s take a second to marvel at what these people achieved- you can’t deny it, despite the fact it seemed like sci-fi to me as a young man, they did it. They succeeded and went far far far beyond what is found in this video. It is amazing.
It is weird how everyone sounded like Rod Serling. I guess they were trained to speak like that back then
The film was made to "wake up" the politicians in America. It was not made for the average citizen of the world. Back then 99% of politicians barely knew how to use a computer. They needed to be told - firmly - that America is screwed if it does not act immediately. So yes in America we are pro-American actually.That does not mean we don't like other countries. But yes in America (as I am sure in your country) we tend to want to continue on as a nation and not be left behind.
And 8 years after this comment, we are circling the drain. Pretty sure you didn't choose "Futurist" as a profession. "We tend to want to continue on as a nation..............but by Jesus I won't wear a mask or get vaccinated."
Nice call, Kim. (EYEROLL)
@@slowneutron6163continuing to advance technologically does not equate to advancing socially. There can be incredible technological advancement without sociological advancement, and we are experiencing that right now.
Almost seems inversely proportional at this point @@christopherlee7334
i love how the guy just throws the red car, as if setting it down woulda been a waste of time
That analogy of cars versus computers is typical liberal groupthink. Ignore reality is the liberal mantra.
Little did they realize that every second of your life could be monetized by any activity on the internet. Big Business or Big Brother?
"In the future, people will use this information superhighway to watch cats do stupid things."
"Yeah, right. Videos on a computer? This information age is just a fad that will die out."
A lot of these clips I first spotted in James Burke's connections. I wonder if they are stock?
This is Peak 80s
Let's do it! I'm pumped!
Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you!
It used to do that in the 80's before we got it right...
7:20 for the specific reference to information superhighway.
What was envisioned to be the Information Age became the Porn Superhighway. Without porn, the internet would have NEVER experienced the growth of size, power, and sophistication.
Yes, commerce and online merchandising helped but, porn was, and still is, the prime driving force of all internet development. The internet encompasses both technical progress and cultural/social degeneracy.
How did they access Dr Joyce Brothers in 1985?
I love the Flintstone phone at 1:39
I think it would be interesting to compare those predictions to reality.
Leonid Uvarov As I sit here watching this on my phone in 2017, some might have been a stretch in 1985, but most was pretty common by 1995 and something we take for granted today.
Watching this here in the 21st Century is what the Disney Imagineers once called "Looking Back At Tomorrow".
8:33 I would say 30 years is not too distant a future
Anything in the "AT&T Archive" about the dissolution of Directv?
Guess you didn't get the memo that AT&T purchased DirecTV from Hughes back in 2020. 📡
You would think with all the technology, you display everything on the same TV screen instead of having to walk up and down stair to different TVs.
What do you mean? Pip has been around for a long time but just doesn’t work!
I‘m jacked into the information superhighway
I believe that now it is 'jacking ON the information superhighway' LOL
information age they had no idea
Epic.
A calculator in every pocket? Who would do that?
i didnt know at&t had yt channel
Hopefully in the future they'll make shows without grating music.
The Equator appears to run through Chicago.
"Workers are able to telecommute." Now we have digital nomads. :)
Who produce nothing but CZcams videos and shitty blogs.
Looks like the world REALLY changed.
AT&T - AperTure Testing
Maybe you could use that information to learn the difference between 'their' and 'there'!
+AT&T Tech Channel "The public has the right to the most advanced systems that technology has to offer."
Is that right AT&T? Then why have you made it a point to keep high speed internet from rural communities? Jerks!
The huge cost of the infrastructure to extend high speed to rural communities. Sure, it could be done, but most people wouldn't be able to afford it. There is a price to pay for living in a rural area.
James Vaught NO, actually they stop the wiring a mere 500-600 feet from a great many 200,000-300,000 dollar homes in rural areas, so this is why we are on Satellite systems. It's quick and unlimited between 2am and 7am, but max during day is 250 megs of data, which sucks.
As many times as people stereotype rural people as being too poor to afford high speed internet at what 2 bucks a day:/ ( please!)...I guess we should keep our mouths shut. Afterall, we hilljacks either all go to bed at 7pm and get up at 4am to farm, or we supposedly party all night?...so that's okay.
I use a download manager in the free am's anyway..., but using NEW dotCLOUDfile to capture CZcams videos is a bitch unless I get up 5am, which I do at times...see folks, 250megs means no video in the day or it sucks it down QUICK!
So, why do YOU think they don't extend the service if the people could afford it? I think that there simply aren't ENOUGH people who could afford it for them to make a profit on it. Everything is about money.
James Vaught Look at the demographics of households where people are making incomes well within the range of being able to afford $50 month to get a high speed service to their area. They literally stop 500 feet short of wiring if there are less than 10 homes on a dead end route. It doesn't matter if they are $30,000 homes or $300,000. So enough with the 'poor hill jack' bullshit!
paulj0557: That pretty much confirms my theory, i.e., that there aren't enough who can afford it for them to make money on it.
Anyone know the first song/artist?
No songs in this video
GeekBoy03 MY BAD I MEANT PIECE
NoCountryForLarry Windows Phone, and Google Android has a feature in which you can play the music, and it will try to determine what the name of it I have had some luck with it.
You know it does sound like music from Network Music Ensemble. Canned music in which The Computer Chronicles used (the company), and which was bought out by Production Trax. You may find it on their web site.
GeekBoy03 Thanks!
Now everything can be done on your smartphone.
the smartphone would have been beyond sci-fi to people in 1985... (I was born 3 years earlier) just look at Star Trek from the 1990's set in the 24th century... the idea of a single multipurpose handheld device that does everything didn't even exist then... their scanning, communications, entertainment, and other devices were all separate gadgets.
4:49 he’s basically trying to explain what we call “FaceTime” today
Good thing we didn't waste money back then with a huge government funded communication network. Would have been out of date before they finished. Tech changes so quickly.
Andrew Marlow you do realise the extreme irony in your post I hope?
Let's start building the VR world he's talking about. I'm your man. Or if you don't want outsiders to be involved in such an undertaking, I would happily serve that team as you saw fit. Even cooking for them. I'm quite good.
Wasn’t IBM supposed to be creating irl SAO?
This man looks too old compared to photos of Donald's brother from 1985, and their noses are quite different. I don't think this is the same person.
At 1:02, the globe is spinning backwards...
8:55-Siri!
Kraftwerk beat at 11:42
they didnt predict the rise of social media though---- One that diminish many benefits described here
That's because in the 1980s, there was no such thing as Facebook or Twitter.
@@marcosjuarez7809 You're saying there was no facebook before the internet?
@@9HighFlyer9 You know what I am talking about.
The "beam" app as not been created yet
I didn’t get a computer till the late 1990’s
Most people in 1985 : "Wake me went they invent Pornhub." Just ask the members of the Meese Commission.
11:17 Kraftwerk - Die Roboter
At 1:41, is that a young Drew Barrymore?
yes..a 6 year old on the phone
@Jeffery Amherst not heard of facetious?
Man created the cloud
Holy fucking shit
They started in 1972...
I'm watching this on a phone with 12 gigs of ram I know 1 gig would be amazing to u 😅
I'm going to force all new Interns to watch this
Imagine a guy googles the answer of a
They forgot to factor in one thing...
human greed,
How the hell do you think all of this technology was invented?
They talk like we will be left behind In this video. We lead the way
Its an alternate universe.
The narrator's name is Robert What? Robert WHAT? OMG! :(
Brian Arbenz yep Robert Trump you heard that right
Brian Arbenz Holy shot. A man has the same surname as someone you dispose and you feel the need to comment on it. Oh no! How will you survive?!
We are the robots.
wow. thats a crazy mistake.
I think this video was finally watched by somebody in D.C., 38 years later. Somebody named "Trump" ...
I was struck by the fact he mentioned nothing about the internet. Also, I don't believe information sharing as he envisioned it has become as widespread as he predicted. Sure, there's some but not to that extent. And, he seemed to have NO idea of a smartphone, although they surely must have envisioned them, at least at the cutting edge of the research world.
He did, but it was indirectly. At the time is was still just a network between the government research agencies, military, and universities.
James Vaught I think back then ATT assumed everything would still follow their point to point business model over their network. It all happened over a general purpose network that they were only a small part of instead. The key that cut the floodgates open was the breakup of the ATT Monopoly.
GeekBoy03 And CERN won't have its world wide web, built upon the internet's backbone, out for another decade.
B Laquisha MCI, the greedy MFers that demanded the Bell breakup, is itself dead and gone, and many former independent competitors own or are owned by a former Baby Bell (RBOC).
I saw a smartphone in the Ninja Turtles (1989) and in Star Trek even earlier
TV for banking? not in 1985
blueshirt06 Teletext wasn't widely used in the US, but it was in Canada and Europe.
8:30 I wonder if he lived long enough to use Siri, cuz so far, no good.
Slashdot is a dinosaur website. Only basement-dwellers whose neckbeards have turned gray actually visit that site.
One system with an IP agreement.
And a Kraftwerk soundtrack.
A clock that is also a radio? Amazing! How did people cope with innovations on this scale in the early 1980s? They forgot to mention combined shampoo and conditioner. That was the one the really blew minds.
M8
Haha! I love how they mention that "we" had phones in "our" cars back then . . .
Nobody had that shit in 1985 unless they were wealthy. With companies like AT&T charging $7.00 to $9.00 per minute, cell phones were almost completely out of reach for the average Joe.
The "We" he's mentioning isn't the general public herd. Also by information technology they mean in formation as in the sheep are in formation (herd management).
My dad was a mere detective, but had a 'phone in his (private, by no means department) car in the '60s. I can still quote the dance he did with the mobile operator to meet his welder buddy for a cuppa coffee.
"Wealthy" is an EXTREMELY relative term.
gothatway09
So far as I know, there was no official encouragement. I gather it was his "toy," the way for other guys at the time a hi-fi set or sports car might have been. No idea what it cost him. I'd have to check statistics but I think that may have been about the height of relative middle-class buying power in the US.
Also, we lived in California. I'm guessing the coverage was probably better there than in, say, Oklahoma.
But you're right, I can remember a time in first(?) grade when he showed up at school, the other kids saw it, and I was pretty cool the rest of the day. (^_^)
I worked for weeks to buy a C-64 floppy drive, and my boss wound send me out with $3000 to buy a ten MEG hard drive.
Strange. In 1982 I bought 15 megabyte CMD 5-1/4" HDs for about $450.00 and 10 megabyte Seagates for $350.00, plus 5-1/4" floppy drives of 1.2 megabyte capacity for $120.00.
COMPUNISM IS HERE!
Got to love propoganda of the 80's.
We need car phones
What lunatic picked the music?
@6:45 "If automobiles had advanced in the same ways as has computers a car today would cost $2.50, would get 1.5 million miles per gallon, it would weigh about half a pound."
And crash three times a day. =)
And what did humans do with the Information Age? Made memes and undermined the news.
And the new day has begun in California...America wake up!
In the future, you can steal a poor scientist idea who uploads it to the Internet and your multi million dollar company designs produces and then trains their sales team on how to sell the stolen product. 😮😢
Everything is stock footage.
I watched this in 2016 on crappy AT&T Uverse service. What a joke. Most evenings between 6 pm to 10 pm I have to lower the resolution to 240p to keep the picture and audio from stuttering. Two months ago it was barely working and when I did an online speed test it came back 23 kbps. I did better when I had America On Line.
Robert Trump??
Justin Gantt he must be narrating in order to boost his bigoted views on the future of technology!!!!🙄
Robert Trumbull
The one dislike to this video is one guy who hates change.
Who ever guessed that this new information age was going to be able to cancel people who think different than an opposing crowd ...! Imagine if that ever happened ! Just saying.... HMMMMMMM..
America was left behind
4:36 that guy either has no idea what he is talking about, or isn't prepared at all (or both).
Rip Robert trump
All these predictions are ridiculous. It will never happen! 😆😂
The Future ! Laserlight treats cancer, predict earthquakes ? Maybe. 40 years later, laserlight blinds pilots by exponential growths of idiots.
Now in the Obama Age, over half the workforce is in retail, or fastfood.
Chalk that up to automation, which is rapidly destroying good jobs and reducing most people to crap work, which, of course, doesn't pay enough to purchase the goods and services created by the aforesaid automation. Of course, Obama's economic policies have made the situation even worse. Automation is cancer of the economic system and will eventually destroy our civilization.
That was just the same with Bush in office. Try again. Most of the jobs left after Regan broke up the Unions. I voted for that sad bastard.
Tak Wolf LOL!!! The unions broke themselves up. Why else you think Detroit is a shit hole now? Unions drove the cost of making vehicles more than their competitors, forcing them to look elsewhere to make their vehicles. Talk about try again
Thulsa Doom: Obama's presidency has been far worse than Bush's.
James Vaught Yes that is true. Osicko is the biggest piece of shit ever.
This is all witch craft