AT&T has a long history of hanging around in the world of technology, and apparently a group of prophets were running the show circa 1993, but the wise men and women in charge were a bit slow on engaging their own predictions. A marvelous artifact of "what technology would become" was recently unearthed, showing AT&T's hypotheses about what devices and marvels we'd see in the years to come. The video file (click on for the YouTube demonstration), originally found on a CD-ROM called "Newsweek Interactive," speaks of
e-readers,
in-car GPS units,
tablet PCs,
WiFi,
memory chips, interactive
ATMs,
videoconferencing,
biometrics,
digital medical cards,
downloadable flicks,
on-demand content,
distance education, and even
internet browsers -- all years before these things hit the mainstream (or were even invented). Ironically, none of these creations were crafted directly by AT&T, as other firms apparently pulled the trigger on these ideas before the telecom giant could do it itself. While it's easy to take
text messaging,
Bluetooth syncs, and
quad-core processors for granted now, we've got to wonder
how wild things
will be in just another decade further from
1985.
