With Innovation, You Will
AT&T's 1993 technology predictions
More than a decade ago, I first watched this 30-year old montage of AT&T ads:
The reason this originally caught my eye was that a number of these technologies were really just coming live at that time. But several were still not available broadly to consumers.
There are 14 technologies shown in this mega mix of commercials. Finally, 2025 marks the year in which the last technology prophesied by AT&T has come online!
The following is a list of all the technologies mentioned, in order of appearance, and the leading products/companies in that tech.
A few notes:
The one that probably has not lived up to the dream pictured in the advert is, of course, electronic medical records. It’s just so hard in a government-regulated field like health care.
Despite not being seen as a great innovator in more recent years, Apple does show up multiple times and is the clear leader in several of these areas.
And, the last technology in the montage, just became the last technology to be conquered! And, yes, it’s another feather in Apple’s cap achieved with the new AirPods Pro 3.
Literally every technology AT&T showed is now live. It took 32 years. But, now, we will are.
It’s a remarkable job by whomever created the ad campaign with AT&T. But it’s also remarkable that AT&T has capitalized on very little across these technologies.