AT&T's predictions of 2014 in 1994 were surprisingly accruate

One of the more interesting ones was the renewing a drivers license at a kiosk. Right now you either renew it online from home or wait in a ridiculously long line to talk to a human. This shows that some tasks are not practical to completely automate, at least until we invent very smart machines or better wireless / video chat type scenarios. I don't really see why DMV employees can't be remotely located and have a TV monitor and less employees at the location.

The other inventions were spot on for the most part. Probably because the ideas are fairly easy, it's the execution and bringing to market that are difficult. The components and infrastructure just wasn't there to make a lot of those things happen without the internet, which was not as common as it is now (20 years later). The internet will continue to change the way we live, there are still lots of potential to better automate processes and make the world more efficient. It's getting kind of hard to imagine the next 20 years though. We've come so far in the past 20 that the things that are left are the really hard problems (space travel, re-arranging molecules and atoms at will, advanced medicine).

One problem with a more efficient and automated world is the loss of jobs. Hopefully all of this innovation will also create as many jobs as it removes. Then we can also start moving towards a post-scarcity society, like socialism but more of a Utopian society that will actually work. We just need molecular re-arrangers to be as common as a printer and BAM, then the only things we will have to worry about are running out of land and accidentally creating a virus, parasite, or robot that kills everyone.

That's insane. I wonder what they already have in store for the next 20 years.

Reminds me of this article I just read, "Ray Kurzweil: This is your future" http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/business/ray-kurzweil-future-o...

I wonder how many of those innovations at the time AT&T was involved in bringing to market.

Also interesting to see the analog nature of things prevalent in the ads-- how the images flicker into place on the screens.