AT&T accurately predicts the future, incorrectly picks delivering company
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.
