You Will

"You Will" was an AT&T marketing campaign launched in 1993, consisting of commercials directed by David Fincher.^[1][2] 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.^[1]

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.^[3]

Innovations

The proposed innovations included:^[4]

• 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?")^[5]
• Telemedicine ("[Have you ever] put your heads together, when you're not together?")^[5]
• 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?")^[6] 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?")^[6]
• 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.^[6]
• 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

1. 1 2 Remember The AT&T Ads About the Future? You Will
2. ↑ David Fincher - Other works
3. ↑ Lee, Timothy B. (2016-07-28). "We live in the future AT&T imagined in 1994 [sic]". Vox. Retrieved 2016-07-29. 
4. ↑ Kicker Studio | AT&T’s “You Will” Ads, 15 Years Later
5. 1 2 "AT&T - You Will/Market (1994) 0:30 (USA) | Adland ®". adland.tv. Retrieved 2016-07-30. 
6. 1 2 3 "AT&T - You Will/Class (1994) 0:30 (USA) | Adland ®". adland.tv. Retrieved 2016-07-30. 

External links

• Press release announcing the campaign
• Series of four ads on YouTube
• Six of the ads from adland.tv
• New AT&T "You Will" spots created by the AT&T Tech Channel