What Won't You See Coming?

Over the weekend, Mr. Commute and I unpacked some boxes in the garage and discovered a large cache of videotapes we made of one of our favorite TV shows that aired in the early and mid-1990s. We finally acquired a VHS-to-DVD burner, and so we're transferring these gems to a more modern medium. The shows are great, but the best part about the whole process is the commercials. Remember 10-10-321? A ton of big stars advertised this service in the waning days of payphones before cellphones became ubiquitous.

There are also a ton of ads for cameras and film. The idea seemed to have been that you would want to take the highest quality picture possible so that when you scanned the photos in (or had them scanned at the processor) they would look good on your computer. It was kind of weird.

Car advertisements were remarkably un-different than they are today. Zooming around, maybe with slower editing. And Geico was running a weird ad starring the AFLAC duck (or maybe it's just that all ducks in television advertising look like the AFLAC duck because AFLAC so owns the duck thing...now that's branding kids!).

In any event, there is nothing in any of the ads from 1995 that suggests smart phones, iPhones, internet fast enough to watch more than a clip on it (although SciFi and Comedy Central were both pushing video on their sites even back in the dark ages). Ipods and digital music aren't even a gleam in the eye of advertisers. And then this post on growingchanginglearningcreating (not sure if that's all one word or what) got me thinking about things that I don't see coming now.

I'm kind of freaking out.