It's called "Shopping in 1999 A.D." (which, we should note, ought to read "Shopping in A.D. 1999") and supposedly represents a 1960s imagining of a home computer system late in the century. As Snopes notes, it seems to be legit. They also do a pretty good analysis of it. I was really struck by how well they got things in general. There are differences, of course, as the Snopes folks point out. The "Online banking" seems to be more of a way to view paper documents, but the video also describes the actual paying of bills and such online. And no keyboards! That's what struck me. I couldn't tell how they navigated anywhere, except that a couple of button pushes seemed to get them everywhere. Also interesting was the flat screens; no CRTs which is mostly all that was around then (if not totally).
Thursday, December 13, 2007
It's called "Shopping in 1999 A.D." (which, we should note, ought to read "Shopping in A.D. 1999") and supposedly represents a 1960s imagining of a home computer system late in the century. As Snopes notes, it seems to be legit. They also do a pretty good analysis of it. I was really struck by how well they got things in general. There are differences, of course, as the Snopes folks point out. The "Online banking" seems to be more of a way to view paper documents, but the video also describes the actual paying of bills and such online. And no keyboards! That's what struck me. I couldn't tell how they navigated anywhere, except that a couple of button pushes seemed to get them everywhere. Also interesting was the flat screens; no CRTs which is mostly all that was around then (if not totally).