You Will

Updated on Oct 05, 2024

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"You Will" was an AT&T marketing campaign launched in 1993, consisting of commercials directed by David Fincher. Each ad presented a futuristic scenario beginning with "Have you ever…" and ending with "…you will. And the company that will bring it to you: AT&T."

The ads were narrated by Tom Selleck.

In 2016, technology writer Timothy B. Lee commented that "overall, the ads were remarkably accurate in predicting the cutting-edge technologies of the coming decades. But the ads were mostly wrong about one thing: the company that brought these technologies to the world was not AT&T", except for AT&T provided some of the world's communication infrastructure.

Innovations

The proposed innovations included:

Grocery checkout machines that would process an entire cart at a time without the groceries needing to be removed, presumably via RFID or something similar ("Have you ever checked out at the supermarket, a whole cart at a time?")

Telemedicine ("[Have you ever] put your heads together, when you're not together?")

Intelligent personal assistants ("Have you ever had an assistant who lived in your computer?")

Videoconferencing ("Have you ever shown up for a meeting in your bare feet?")

GPS navigation systems with automatic rerouting based on live traffic ("Have you ever crossed the country without stopping to ask directions?")

Wi-Fi/WAN, tablet computing and portable pen computing ("Have you ever sent a fax from the beach?")

Smartwatches ("[Have you ever] gotten a phone call, on your wrist?")

Self-service kiosks ("Have you ever renewed your drivers license at a cash machine?")

Real-time online collaboration, envisioned as two students teaching each other their native languages over videophone ("Have you ever studied with a classmate thousands of miles away?") and, in a separate ad, as a father reading a bed-time story to his child remotely, while they both view the same page of the story on their individual laptops.

Online libraries ("Have you ever borrowed a book, thousands of miles away?")

Electronic toll collection ("Have you ever paid a toll without slowing down?")

Video on demand ("Have you ever watched the movie you wanted to, when you wanted to?")

A combination of video conferencing, speech recognition, and translation software ("[Have you ever] conducted business in a language you don't understand?")

Home automation ("[Have you ever] kept an eye on your home when you're not at home?") which is accessed in the ad via a touchscreen smartphone.

Distance learning ("[Have you ever] learned special things, from far away places"?) as a student learns the history of jazz via video conference with his teacher.

References

You Will Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA