Cornucopia (1993)

According to the company Empruve, this futuristic multimedia device from 1993, "will become as much an integral part of our lives as the telephone, the television, the typewriter and the book." The photo and its caption (below) were found in the book Understanding Hypermedia.

According to Caruso.com the developer costs for Empruve's Cornucopia were between $4,000 and $5,000.

Advanced multimedia systems will become as much an integral part of our lives as the telephone, the television, the typewriter and the book. "Cornucopia" demonstrates how ergonomic a multimedia system can be. The system uses DVI technology and a CDROM drive, and combines an A4 paper white screen and a colour screen (for stills and motion video) with a new control device called a "tadpole."

See also:
Starfire (1994)
GTE's Classroom of the Future (1987)
Motorola's 2000 A.D. (1990)
Pacific Bell Concept Video (1991)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Flowers by Alice (1992)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)

Auto-Tutor (1964)

This "auto-tutor" from the 1964 World's Fair is very similar in concept to the "homework machine" we looked at from 1981. The photo above can be found in the Official Souvenir Book of the 1964 New York World's Fair.

AUTOMATED SCHOOLMARM
The Autotutor, a U.S. Industries teaching machine, is tried out by visitors to the Hall of Education. It can even teach workers to use other automated machines.

See also:
Homework in the Future (1981)
The Answer Machine (1964)
Learning in 1999 A.D. (1967)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 7, 1993)
The Road Ahead: Future Classroom (1995)
Closer Than We Think! (1958-1963)

"Broadband" by Australia Telecom (1992)

The 1992 Australia Telecom concept video, Broadband, taught us about Orwellian biometrics, 1980s music video catwalks and beeping user interfaces of the future. All three parts appear below.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

See also:
Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 1, 1992)
Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 2, 1992)
Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 3, 1992)

Computer Games of the Future (1981)

This holographic computer game of the future is from the 1981 book Tomorrow's Home by Neil Ardley.

The caption explains, "A home computer game of the future has solid images of spaceships that move in midair. These are holographic images produced by laser beams. The game is played with other people who also sit at their home computers and see the same images. Each player controls a ship and tries to destroy the other ships. Guess which player is winning!"

The entire text of this two-page spread appears below.

Your day in the future continues. It's not a school day, so you can do whatever you like. However, it's raining, so you can't play outside. Although scientists can now control the weather, this is done only in certain places to produce artificial climates that aid farming. Your home is not one of these places.

Even though everyone is busy and you're stuck at home on your own, you're still going to have an exciting and interesting day. After breakfast, you rush on to the living room. It has chairs and other furniture in new designs as well as some antiques like a twentieth-century digital clock and a push-button telephone. However, the room is dominated by a large viewscreen linked to the home computer.

You ask the computer to contact several friends, and they begin to appear on the screen. Soon you're linked into a worldwide group of people, all of whom can talk to and see each other. After chatting for a while, you decide to play some games together. As you can't agree on what to play, the computer makes up your minds for you. It gives you puzzles to do and devises quizzes, as well as all kinds of electronic games. The computer keeps the scores as you play against one another, and then it gives you games in which you all play the computer. You carry on until someone loses interest and tries to cheat for fun. The computer finds out and everyone laughs. Then it's time to break up the party and have lunch.

After lunch you decide to spend some time on your own at a hobby or craft you particularly enjoy. Making things of all kinds is easy with the computer. You design them on the screen of the terminal in your playroom, and then the computer operates a machine that constructs the objects in materials such as plastics. This system is very good for making your own clothes. You can dress up in all kinds of fantastic garments that you design yourself. To avoid waste, the objects and clothes can be fed back into the machine and the materials recycled or used again.

See also:
Future Arcade Games (1985)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 3, 1993)
Virtual Reality (1980s-today)
Homework in the Future (1981)
Home Entertainment of the Future (1981)
Learning in 1999 A.D. (1967)

Computers in the Home by Year 2000 (1978)

The March 30, 1978 Titusville Herald (Titusville, PA) ran a story about Honeywell's Man-Made Sciences Group titled, "Between Man and Machine." An excerpt which quotes Arnold Kanarick appears below.

"Human-computer interaction is the real growth area," Kanarick says. "I don't think it's too blue-sky to say that you'll find a computer in the American home by the year 2000. They're getting smaller and less expensive every year. One day computers will be running our houses, ordering our groceries, doing a thousand things we now do for ourselves.

"Interacting with them will be a common and casual thing, like using the telephone is today. No matter how automated the world becomes the machines will still be working for our convenience, and not the other way around."

See also:
Computersville is almost here (1970)
Living Room of the Future (1979)
Computers the size of a room (1970)
Fuzzy-Duzzy, The Computer You Cuddle (1976)

Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 3, 1992)

Today we have the third and final installment of the 1992 Australia Telecom concept video, Broadband. Enjoy.

See also:
Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 1, 1992)
Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 2, 1992)

Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 2, 1992)

Part 2 of the 1992 Australia Telecom concept video Broadband demonstrates teleconferencing via videophone, as well as encrypted data transfer.

Oh, and scary metal walkways of the future. Don't forget the walkways.


Stay tuned for part 3, coming soon.

See also:
Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 1, 1992)

Australia Telecom's Broadband (Part 1, 1992)

The 1992 Australia Telecom concept video, Broadband, envisions the futuristic world of 1996. Part 1 shows us videophone conferencing, moving large amounts of data between computers, as well as (Orwellian) biometric scans.

See also:
Motorola's 2000 A.D. (1990)
Pacific Bell Concept Video (1991)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Flowers by Alice (1992)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)
Vision (Clip 1, 1993)
Vision (Clip 2, 1993)
Vision (Clip 3, 1993)
Starfire (1994)
GTE's Classroom of the Future (1987)

Computersville is almost here (1970)

The November 8, 1970 Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, OH) ran an article titled, "Computersville is almost here." The entire piece appears below.

NEW YORK (UPI) - In Computersville this day, Jane Doe presses buttons on the mini-computer in her kitchen.

She orders up a week's worth of low-calorie menus. Within micro-seconds, the machine devises such meal plans. Then it prints them.

Before she entered the kitchen, Mrs. Doe stopped briefly in the living room to admire the family's newest possession - a huge geometric print, drawn by computer.

As she goes about her chores, she is relaxed by the sounds of her favorite record, Computer Concerto. This features a musical score created by computer and orchestrated by computer. The sounds are electronic. There are blips and beeps and modulated static.

At times the sounds blend noises of a dozen jets waiting on the runway to takeoff. Altogether, it is a pleasant record.

In the afternoon, Mrs. Doe goes to her small town's medical center for her annual physical. Among other things, she has an electrocardiogram - administered by technicians, processed by computer and read, of course, by computer.

The printout on her eletrocardiogram: "Non specific T-wave changes. Possibly borderline gram. Probably within normal limits."

All of these things from the world of computers were seen at an unconventional convention in New York - the 25th National Conference of the Association for Computing Machinery.

They will come home to roost in the not-too-distant future. You probably won't have to wait until the year 2,000, for example, to have computer art and music in your home. Hospitals of the land already are experimenting with diagnosis by computer.

The menu - planning computer for the kitchen, while a bit expensive around $10,000, is available. It is designed to help keep track of financial records, lend a hand with the children's homework - and perform many other tasks.

After Radiohead's Amnesiac was released, friends and I would joke that their next record would be nothing but airplane noises. I would actually be interested in hearing that Computer Concerto record.

See also:
1999 A.D. (1967)
Frigidaire Kitchen of the Future (1957)
That 60's Food of the Future
Monsanto House of the Future (1957-1967)
Call a Serviceman (Chicago Tribune, 1959)
The Electronic Brain Made Beef Stew (1959)
Something must be wrong with its radar eye! (Chicago Tribune, 1959)

The End of Work (1966)

Today, we have more from the 1966 radio documentary 2000 A.D.. In this part of the program host Chet Huntley talks with Irwin "Bud" Lewis about the future of computers and leisure.

My opinion is that we're going to have to readjust our old, Puritan perhaps, concepts of what a person should do with his life. We used to believe that work was ennobling, that a man who devoted himself to hard work was in some way virtuous. Now, it seems to me, that what is required is a different attitude toward what a man should do with his life. Because there's not going to be all the jobs that used to be around.

Listen to the program here.

See also:
2000 A.D. Radio Documentary (1966)
Going Backward into 2000 (1966)
Transportation in 2000 A.D. (1966)

Pacific Bell Concept Video (1991)

The 1991 Pacific Bell concept video that we looked at in pieces a couple weeks back imagines a world of communication much like that of Connections from AT&T. Parts one through three of this unnamed Pacific Bell video appear below.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

See also:
Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 1, 1991)
Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 2, 1991)
Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 3, 1991)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Flowers by Alice (1992)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)
Vision (Clip 1, 1993)
Vision (Clip 2, 1993)
Vision (Clip 3, 1993)
Starfire (1994)
GTE's Classroom of the Future (1987)

Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 3, 1991)

The third and final chapter of our untitled 1991 Pacific Bell concept video introduces us to the public videophones of the future, similar to those we saw in AT&T's Connections video from 1993.

See also:
Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 1, 1991)
Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 2, 1991)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (Part 4, 1993)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)

Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 2, 1991)

Part 2 of this unnamed Pacific Bell concept video has a visual voicemail feature (or in this case, audible voicemail) that iPhone users may find familiar.

See also:
Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 1, 1991)

Pacific Bell Concept Video (Part 1, 1991)

This unnamed Pacific Bell concept video from 1991 is set in the year 2003. With a young woman giving birth as our main plot device, we're able to see how people of the 21st century will work, shop and communicate. Below is part 1 of 3.

See also:
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Flowers by Alice (1992)
Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987)
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)
Vision (Clip 1, 1993)
Vision (Clip 2, 1993)
Vision (Clip 3, 1993)
Starfire (1994)
GTE's Classroom of the Future (1987)

Paleo-Future in the Wall Street Journal

If you read today's Wall Street Journal you may have seen a piece by Lee Gomes, which mentions the Paleo-Future blog.

Another way to follow evolving social attitudes about computers is through the "concept videos" made by computer companies. Analogous to Detroit's concept cars, these videos are designed to show a company's visionary idea about what computers might be one day, without obliging it to actually build them.

The best place to look at these videos is at PaleoFuture (paleo-future.blogspot.com), which allows an amazing look back at visions of the future, starting back in the 1880s. The exhibit is curated with great wit by 24-year-old Matt Novak of Minneapolis. Most of these retrofutures are full of optimistic technology, like what you'd see at a World's Fair or Disneyland's World of Tomorrow.

Computer-company concept videos tend to be set in the immediate future, a happy time of well-dressed people who spend their days either running small businesses or preparing sales reports. PaleoFuture has two videos from the early 1990s, one from Sun Microsystems and the other from AT&T, telling us about life in 2004.

These videos avoid the silliness of similar efforts from the 1960s, such as the 1967 movie from Philco-Ford showing moms in 1999 pushing a button to make dinner. Still, they manage to blur easy engineering problems with very hard ones, which results in their being off by miles in some of their predictions. In most of these videos, for example, the computer understands casual spoken English well enough to be able to act as an ever-alert concierge, dialing up business associates on the phone and yanking reports on demand from its memory, then cheerfully saying something back to their owner after finishing a task.

Mr. Novak says that since then, the computer industry seems to have gotten smarter about how dumb computers can be and what they're really good for. "Computers of the future were to be artificial humans," he says. "At some point, we realized that we didn't care to talk with machines. We wanted to communicate with humans more efficiently."

See also:
Article for MungBeing
Sincerity and the Paleo-Future
Postmodern Paleo-Future

Start 'em Young (1991)

I have three questions about this picture:

1. Why did we believe paper faxes were the future?

2. Does that toddler have Wi-Fi?

3. Why does the teddy bear have a phone?


This illustration by Tom Chalkley ran in the November-December, 1991 issue of The Futurist magazine.

See also:
Apple's Grey Flannel Navigator (1988)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)
Starfire (Part 3, 1994)
Online Shopping (1967)

Starfire (1994)

Today we have the 1994 Sun Microsystems concept video Starfire in its entirety. You can still access individual clips of the program from the links below or you can download the video here.



See also:
Starfire (Part 1, 1994)
Starfire (Part 2, 1994)
Starfire (Part 3, 1994)
Starfire (Part 4, 1994)
Starfire (Part 5, 1994)
Starfire (Part 6, 1994)
Starfire (Part 7, 1994)
Starfire (Part 8, 1994)

Starfire (Part 8, 1994)

And now, the thrilling conclusion to the 1994 Sun Microsystems concept video, Starfire. If you'd like to download the video in its entirety you can find it here.

See also:
Starfire (Part 1, 1994)
Starfire (Part 2, 1994)
Starfire (Part 3, 1994)
Starfire (Part 4, 1994)
Starfire (Part 5, 1994)
Starfire (Part 6, 1994)
Starfire (Part 7, 1994)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)

Starfire (Part 7, 1994)

Part 7 of the Starfire video shows the helmet-haired antagonist attempting to derail our heroine's brilliant business plan. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion.

See also:
Starfire (Part 1, 1994)
Starfire (Part 2, 1994)
Starfire (Part 3, 1994)
Starfire (Part 4, 1994)
Starfire (Part 5, 1994)
Starfire (Part 6, 1994)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)

Starfire (Part 6, 1994)

Part 6 of the Sun Microsystems video Starfire shows how a presentation can be prepared and presented (to floating heads).

I apologize for the glitchy video. Parts 7 and 8 should look much better.

See also:
Starfire (Part 1, 1994)
Starfire (Part 2, 1994)
Starfire (Part 3, 1994)
Starfire (Part 4, 1994)
Starfire (Part 5, 1994)
Connections: AT&T's Vision of the Future (1993)