Video: Amazon, the early years
posted at 3:57 pm on September 11, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Something stupid on a serious day. Laugh if you must but they did pretty well with the basic concepts.
That self-repairing “home post office” machine is pretty rad, though, huh?
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When was that made? Pretty amazing! Where is this communal agency that monitors circuits? Sounds like an illegal NSA program… unless, of course, they are monitoring circuits overseas.
Ordinary1 on September 11, 2007 at 4:04 PM
Supposedly it’s from a film called “1999 A.D.” made in 1967.
Allahpundit on September 11, 2007 at 4:06 PM
Reminds me of the first Facsimile machine I ever saw. It was in the military. You would write a message and clip it to drum with a 6” dia. Then put the reading stylus on it and it would start spinning. The receiving party had to put a blank piece of paper on the drum on another unit and engage the writing stylus. The receiving machine would spin and the image would amazingly be written in pixilated bits on the spinning paper. A thought I was watch witchcraft. It was totally amazing.
TheSitRep on September 11, 2007 at 4:07 PM
Wow! I was 4. I remember my sophomore year in high school, our math teacher said that we would be able to send letters over the phone lines and many laughed! That was 1977 and I was messing around on my Dad’s bosses TRS-80 (trash 80) debugging a football game in “basic”. Ah, memories. Like my first Prodigy account through work in 1991. No real internet yet even then!
Ordinary1 on September 11, 2007 at 4:11 PM
I signed up and got that alcatel terminal. jees how time have changed you couldnt do crap with it.
TheSitRep on September 11, 2007 at 4:14 PM
All that and an iPhone.
If 1967 were today, what would 2039 look like?
Kini on September 11, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Where are Mike and the bots?
Perpetual Student on September 11, 2007 at 4:16 PM
i like how the woman can’t buy something without the husband approving.
and his reaction when he sees another “bill” from the department store is classic.
they did do a great job with the concepts though.
lorien1973 on September 11, 2007 at 4:17 PM
lol, did you see the husbands face when he was reviewing his wifes purchases? :)
offroadaz on September 11, 2007 at 4:17 PM
Cool. This was revolutionary at the time and it turns out to be pretty accurate.
I’m still waiting for my flying car though to get out of this dang traffic (and I live way out in the country).
ThackerAgency on September 11, 2007 at 4:17 PM
Oh, that poor fool will be in for quite a shock when he starts to suspect his wife of sending “certain correspondenses” into his inbox.
BKennedy on September 11, 2007 at 4:18 PM
Fembots. Fembots w/iPhones.
Bill C on September 11, 2007 at 4:18 PM
Amazingly well. Much better than predictions regarding space travel and (ahem) robots.
RedWinged Blackbird on September 11, 2007 at 4:21 PM
That looks likes some serious prior art for the one-click patent. It clearly talks about financial information being stored and charged against, which is basically what 1-click is all about.
pedestrian on September 11, 2007 at 4:21 PM
mwhahaah, nice one AP. could do with a laugh today.
/me buys AP new ipodtouch for ramadan.
zane on September 11, 2007 at 4:21 PM
Sounds like the 1970’s TV series “The 21st Century”, which speculated on what technology might be like in 2001.
The real year 2001 turned out to be different from what the show imagined.
And 1999 turned out to be a song by Prince ;>)
Bigfoot on September 11, 2007 at 4:27 PM
I used to think Alvin Tofler was a visionary for getting a lot of these concepts right in “The Third Wave”, published in 1980. Now I see he was actually late to the party.
Amazing.
thirteen28 on September 11, 2007 at 4:27 PM
AHHH! The colors! They burn!!!
Of course, I had a magical toy when I was in the military, too. As I recall, I would write a message on a little pad of paper with a pen that was held by a couple of levers. When I hung up the pen, AT THAT VERY INSTANT, my message would go out all over the base to other machines! Such magic!!!
I forget what they called that thing. Vintage 1980. Hmmm…
wccawa on September 11, 2007 at 4:29 PM
Damn….that’s pretty darned accurate! Probably the best “vision of the future” from the 60’s I’ve ever seen…
The only thing they left out was all that spam…
JetBoy on September 11, 2007 at 4:29 PM
Checking circuits every two seconds?!?! That’s almost 0.5 Hz! Can’t be done.
Kevin M on September 11, 2007 at 4:33 PM
Money Quote:
“What the wife buys on her console, will paid for by her husband on his counter console.”
Weight of Glory on September 11, 2007 at 4:34 PM
There’s more here:
http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/04/1999-ad-1967.html
pedestrian on September 11, 2007 at 4:34 PM
This seems a case of the tail waging the dog in it’s most extreme. It’s one thing to predict the future of product developement but it is an entierly different thing to steer the course of human behavior into using it precisely as planned. I wonder what and why ‘they’ are planning for the future. With that kind of power over control of human behavior can this scenerio be far behind?
sonnyspats1 on September 11, 2007 at 4:35 PM
Still no flying cars, though.
Blacklake on September 11, 2007 at 4:43 PM
That home post office thingy looks pretty sweet. Someone send me an email when it becomes available.
corbettw on September 11, 2007 at 4:43 PM
And even though we’ve been promised this for years. I still can’t order milk from my refrigerator.
- The Cat
MirCat on September 11, 2007 at 4:45 PM
Jeez. Does that bring back memories. When I was little my mom would take me with her to take Dad his lunch at Sperry Univac. I remember taking it into him where he worked in a garage sized room full of blinking lights, the noise of all the air conditioning and how hot the room was. Years later he was staring at one of the first Texas Instrument LED calculators sitting on his desk at home. He looked up and asked if I remembered that “big hot noisy room”. I said “Yeah.Why?”. He said THAT ENTIRE ROOM was just a calculator.
Guardian on September 11, 2007 at 5:08 PM
I totally want a computer with 60’s-era twist knobs and button on the front to do stuff.
Doesn’t look like anyone making this stuff up realized you could actually record and store information, like pictures of clothes, and zip that off to a video screen.
Neo on September 11, 2007 at 5:21 PM
Heh. I’ll call you on my Iphone!
But Albertson’s will deliver to your door, lazy bum… :)
Califemme on September 11, 2007 at 5:22 PM
The slow shaking of the head and the one hand rubbing the temple was the best.
BadgerHawk on September 11, 2007 at 5:23 PM
I thought we were all supposed to be flying around with jetpacks by now. I am disappointed frankly. Where’s my jetpack??
Keli on September 11, 2007 at 5:26 PM
To TheSitRep: I remember those first fax machines, and how often they failed to operate. It was why I came to the conclusion that the fax machine would never go anywhere…
The video is neat, but the announcer almost put me to sleep.
Blaise on September 11, 2007 at 5:27 PM
Guardian, I remember the laser printer where my dad worked in the early-mid 70’s. It was slightly smaller than my minivan.
For many years, our scratch paper, grocery lists, etc. were unused punch cards. I thought the used ones were pretty dumb, since it made it harder to write on them!
MamaAJ on September 11, 2007 at 5:36 PM
Punch cards! I completely forgot about those. My dad had boxes of those things. I remember “programming” a computer in 6th grade using punch cards. Hours of work to make a stupid picture. They even had a TRS 80 in the classroom but nobody was allowed to touch it because no one knew what to do with it. We just got to look at it.
Guardian on September 11, 2007 at 5:44 PM
I followed the link from pedestrian and found what I want from the future. The No Calorie Beer, unless it is also Non-Alcoholic. Probably would be…they hadn’t come up with a low calorie Cheeseburger substitute yet.
Jay on September 11, 2007 at 5:45 PM
Boy do I feel old, I used to date a girl that was a “key punch operator” That stuff seems like ancient history now.
conservnut on September 11, 2007 at 5:46 PM
This all reminds me when I was very little about 4 or so we went to the NY Worlds Fair think 64-65, they had all this stuff there on display, with THAT voice of that man who always tells you about the future.
Once with 7th Grade Social Studies class, at JHS211 in Brooklyn, we went on a class trip, to some company a student in the class’ father worked for, we saw demonstrations of future telecommunications about 1972 or so. We saw the video phone, and the phone that you can program a card to dial for you. You insert a card and the phone calls the number.
Did they get all that information through the AT&T copper wires before the beakup ? Maybe they invented DSL before we knew it, LOL
StuLongIsland on September 11, 2007 at 6:02 PM
That film was from the 60’s so beer would be non-alcoholic, but you would still get plenty high.
That blog also has some drawings from 1910 showing flying cards and video phones.
pedestrian on September 11, 2007 at 6:07 PM
Check out the:
Honeywell H316 – Kitchen computer
Combination recipe storage box / cutting board.
And yes – it really existed.
CrazyFool on September 11, 2007 at 6:09 PM
Punch cards, LOL I still keep them in my desk at work. When I first got to my job in 1985 with the gov’t. We entered data, 2 ways, one was a big desk thing with a tiny little screen to the left, that typed nothing but text. I ended up at the eye doctor complaining about spots. We also had to key on punch cards financial information. The machine ran these probably 24 inch disks. It was still like 1990 and we were still using it, no one knew how to program the thing, so all our reports said 1980 as dates.
A thing about punch cards was in college, we would get our friends to duplicate them rather than do them ourselves for class. We had to hand them into a room to run the homework in Basic class.
StuLongIsland on September 11, 2007 at 6:09 PM
We do have Roomba…heh.
As for milk, it may not come out of the fridge, but for a while you could order it from Amazon. *sigh* I miss those reviews. Almost as good as those for the Hasselhoff album
sulla on September 11, 2007 at 6:58 PM
Isn’t No Calorie Non-Alchoholic Beer an oxymoron?
BKennedy on September 11, 2007 at 7:47 PM
I call BS. We all know pron was the motivation behind this.
csdeven on September 11, 2007 at 11:23 PM
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