Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Online Shopping (1967)

The most accurate prediction of the 1967 film 1999 A.D. was that of "fingertip shopping". With a video console channeled into the store of your choice you could (gasp!) shop from home.

The "electronic correspondence machine" (or "home post office") was also quite visionary, although it seems no one was betting on the QWERTY keyboard.



You can find 1999 A.D. on the DVD Yesterday's Tomorrows Today, released by A/V Geeks.

See also:
1999 A.D. (1967)
Monsanto House of the Future (1957-1967)

9 comments:

Jessamyn Harris said...

I love how "futuristic" the gender roles are here...

Mark Plus said...

"This is Bob. Bob is ordering Enzyte through his console."

Anonymous said...

Indeed. Money quote: "What the wife orders on her console, the husband pays for on his counterpart console." With what looks like a microfiche of the bill!

Adam Rice said...

Also interesting how every task has its own monitor.

MattyMatt said...

These things never count on social changes, do they?

I wonder how the film would have been received if it showed the man ordering clothes and the woman paying bills. Probably about as well as a video with a gay couple would be received today.

Anonymous said...

And, uh, Ma Bell will just run all these zillions of wires (circuits) behind the scenes. It will scale beautifully, we promise!

Anonymous said...

Isn't it cute how they made things harder than they needed to be?

Mom looks at clothes that are live on camera instead of just a representative image. There's a neighborhood geek squad to come repair your computer (that looks like a complicated 8 track stereo receiver combo).

Anonymous said...

You always need to filter out the cultural from the technological.....this is a pretty good representation of what we can do today on the Internet.

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