1967 film showcases the futuristic family home of 1999
by Mark Frauenfelder from on (#30M33)
In 1999, Dad will use his three-panel home computer to help him with his hobby of grafting fruit trees, Junior will watch his science lessons on a giant flat-screen TV and take quizzes on another computer (with a keyboard that has a bunch of paired X-Y buttons only), and Miltown-pacified Mom will take lunch orders from surly Dad and Junior through a video intercom and prepare the weekly meal plan with an AI health-conscious menu assistant piped in through a 110 baud connection to her three-display computer. It's easy to make fun of everything they got wrong here, but the thing they got right is how dependent we've become on interacting with screens all day and night long.
From YouTube description:
1999 AD was a film created by Philco in 1967. It was intended to celebrate the company's 75th anniversary by showing how electronics were going to change how Americans would live in a short 32 years... 1999 AD talked about other things in the future than just computing. It discussed things we'd recognize today as big screen plasma TVs, microwave ovens, and frozen food. Some of the things it didn't get right were the flying cars, modular homes, and the basic culture.
