Saturday, May 28, 2011

Okay...this is AMAZING

This is amazing. It's a prediction of what a home computer would be like and some of the features it would provide. And the cool thing is -- it was made in 1966.

28 comments :

Bob Summers said...

That is cool. I think that's Wink Martindale, famous radio guy and game show host in there. Any relation to Margo?

Reno said...

Remember the narrator, Alexander Scourby? He voiced many "upscale" spots and docs in those days.

Mike H said...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's my Jet Pack?

Jon J said...

IMHO, Scourby's greatest work was narrating "Victory At Sea".

Rinaldo said...

Scourby was brought in to narrate the feature-film condensed version of Victory at Sea, but the 26-episode series was narrated by Leonard Graves.

That Neil Guy said...

The wife looks like Marj Dusay, who later stole Spock's Brain...

Mike Botula said...

Bob, I think you're right. I compared the image with a clip of Wink doing his "Deck of Cards" on the Ed Sullivan Show about the same time. If it's not him, it's his twin. By the way, Ken, which computer company produced this. I wonder if they're still in business. Mike Botula

Anonymous said...

They cut out the part where the man beats his wife for going over her budget.

Paul Duca said...

Yes...this was so amazing, there was a story going around the Internet a few years ago insisting this footage was faked. Los Angeles TV station KCBS ended up doing a story about it, interviewing the man playing the father....which IS Wink Martindale, Bob.


Link to the clip

http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/12/18/1999-ad-controversy.html

Tanya Jones said...

Thanks Ken, it reminds me very strongly of a similar film made by British Telecom in 1969. http://youtu.be/qqtoVmACDng

I think their idea of working from home at the end of the film is very accurate!

David K. M. Klaus said...

Note also that it's analog rather than digital computing, and you're dealing with manipulation of screen photo data, not tabular numbers. I can think of all kinds of programming holes for hackers in this setup.

Nick Davis said...

I KNEW that was the Winker!! First thing that popped into my head when "Dad" came onscreen was "That looks like Wink Martindale...". And notice how pissed he looks the entire time? "Damn that woman... Doesn't she realize how hard I work to provide for this family? And all she does is spend...". Jeez, talk about stone-aged thinking! It seems so primitive now, but it wasn't really that long ago...

Tim W. said...

Those women. They like to shop.

bevo said...

Forget bills and letter correspondence, where is the porn?

Brian Phillips said...

To Ken Levine: Cartoon Network ran a BBC series called, "Look Around You". This was a satire of educational shows, which did a good job of capturing the look and feel of the 1970's. The clip you're featuring reminded me of this. If you haven't seen it, you can see the promo here:

http://video.adultswim.com/look-around-you/look-around-you-promo.html

Every program had a different focus. One episode about computers featured a technician named Patricia who invented the first computer for women, the "Petticoat 5".

tb said...

I love this kind of stuff. And look, flat screen monitors even!

jbryant said...

sephim: The man didn't beat his wife; he programmed his robot butler to do it for him. Ah, the future!

Johnny Walker said...

Wow. There's something oddly disturbing about it. Almost like a child trying to explain something they doesn't fully understand. An echo from the past.

Interestingly, Philip K Dick also managed to predict the internet. It seems there were a handful of people who were somewhat aware of where we were heading...

What will the world be liked in 100 years?

Johnny Walker said...

Doh. "Aware, where, were..." A perfect sentence!

D. McEwan said...

In the future, wives will not be allowed near the money! The husband must handle all funds. I love that they got the technology right (Except for their weird idea that we would hand-write email rather than type it - instant illegibilty world wide), but kept the sexism of the past intact. "Technology will improve, but not society."

I worked with Wink Martindale for a couple years, and recognized him instantly. His age in the clip shows it can't have been much later than 1970, if that late.

RCP said...

Sorry - my ill sense of humor was intercutting images of the kids running with scissors on the top-left monitor, while Mom, oblivious, was punching in shopping codes with a delighted grin.

As an adolescent living overseas in the mid-70s, I remember writing and posting letters that would take 7-10 days to reach the US. Wonderful email!

D. McEwan said...

Mom's spy cam was pretty creepy. Let's hope she takes that our when the kids hit puberty. "MOOOOOOOM!!!!!"

Cap'n Bob said...

Great setup. I can't wait till I can have a computer that advanced. I have a Dell, instead, with Windows Vista.

Chris said...

It's all so sterile and spoken in hushed tones. The mood is so very Stepfordish, it's creepy.

Matt G said...

That is amazing. The tech is spot on in function if not form. The sexual politics - not so much!

Buttermilk Sky said...

Alexander Scourby also recorded the entire Bible. Every word.

RCP said...

D. McEwan said...

Mom's spy cam was pretty creepy. Let's hope she takes that our when the kids hit puberty. "MOOOOOOOM!!!!!"

Maybe dressing up in a corset and high heels would teach those prying eyes a lesson!

Geoduck said...

The scifi author Murray Leinster was the really impressive one; he wrote a short story called "A Logic Named Joe" which came spookily close to predicting home computers and the Internet; it was published in -1946-.