Back then in the 1960s people could afford houses, but not computers. Now in 2023 people can afford powerful computers , but cannot afford even a modest apartment.

…”And finally the computer bills the patient for everything” - this fact sure hasn’t changed!

"The computer is not likely to write a story the city editor will accept." AI: "Hold my beer."

I was 15 in 1967 when I wrote my first computer program. I typed it into the computer which then produced a large stack of punch cards. Those cards were then fed into the computer which then told the machine I was programming what to do. I was enthralled and fell in love with computers from that day.

I'm 60+ years old and a retired software engineer. Mr. Cronkites "special reports " (like this one) and his coverage of the space program had a lot to do with my interest in math & science at a very young age.

“Nor is it likely to write a story…” 😱

This was an episode of the CBS series "The 21st Century" broadcast in the 1960's. Our whole family watched it every week.

I was waiting for the IBM computer to sing "Daisy, Daisy."

born 1970 and grew up with Commodore64 (programming in machine language); it is fascinating to see a 1967 documentary that PREDICTS many of the evolutions in computer technology we take for granted today. Also interesting ....... terminal input/output is mostly still done with teletype machines yet screen terminals did already exist and even graphic input (light pen or similar); there are a few scenes where some kind of terminal screen (i assume it is a CRT) is seen, would be interesting to me how was the character set created at that time. Did the chararter set exist inside the terminal for compatibility reason so the computer still would beleive talking to a teletypewriter, or was the video signal with the character set created inside a controller in the computer itself? Great that this documantary is so real factual and objective (in German we have the term "sachlich" which means something like directly scientific and not blurred with emotions); in the late 1960s and still much later, to most people in the public computers were some type of evil machines that made a lot of noise and were dangerous, could develop a mind of their own etc. so it really is refreshing to see such a well researched documentary here, TNX for uploading.

Thank you for the proper aspect ratio!

These old scientific education films have the best soundtracks

My grandfather, who is 85 started working with computers in 1963, and six decades later, he's still at it! Really interesting time between the peak of the mainframe, and the first microprocessors almost a decade later! He's had quite a few classic punch card stories to tell me, and I remember he used to bring in those larger laptops on a suitcase back when I was a kid in the 90's. This film was quite ahead of it's time. Thanks for the upload!!

I find it amazing that every single one of these predictions ended up coming true in one form or another. Even the one about computers becoming a public service - Yes we have super computers in our pocket, and yet we still interface with publicly accessible servers all the time.

Thanks for posting. I've been wanting to see these again. I was born in 1958 and loved watching this show on Sunday evenings...even though it was sometimes a little over my head.

Very cool stroll down memory lane. My dad was a Toll Test Tech for AT&T when it was Michigan Bell. He brought home punch cards and had a few of their teletype machines in our basement. I learned quick and taught myself to program in Basic later, then in college I learned NC & CNC programming. The first computer I ever saw my dad build was an electronic door lock on his dark room in 1969. He is where I got my inspiration to make my home a smart home. Back then though we didn't have Alexa for voice control or WiFi or Bluetooth. I often wonder if there is someone out there with the name George Jetson, & just what his home & life looks like today. I had to laugh when it said "turns symbols that no man can understand". I write web sites in pure HTML & advanced JavaScript. I know 7 computer languages and can read the holes on NC paper tape & punch cards.

I was impressed by children learning Fortran at school

And today my smartphone has more computing power than all the computers shown in the film combined...

Me: "I come from the future year of 2023. Everyone now has a small computer in the pocket thousands of times more powerful than your top mainframes!" 1968 Guy: "Oh, wow, what do you use it for? Scientific research, solving complex business problems, navigating flying cars?" Me: "Well, we mostly use it to watch x-rated videos and make x-rated cartoons. Also rapid communication has allowed entire mobs to get someone fired for a random joke they made 10 years ago. Plus the government and corporations are using it to track everything you say and do. Also you can play games on it that companies use to exploit psychology for money." 1968 Guy: "Well, that sounds... awful. Like one of those dystopian sci-fi movies." Me: "Yeah, that's pretty much the long and short of it."

15:31 when he refers to huge memory he most likely was referring to it's physical size, not it's capacity :D

"12,000 lines an hour" 200 lines per minute 3.33 lines per second I soldered together my first computer in 1978. I just bought a used Dell Core i7 for $150. It could probably do 12,000 lines per second without breaking a sweat. I doubt that most people today comprehend how much processing power they are buying. 1s and 0s in magnets? Oh yeah, they used core memory back then. They still call it a core dump even though core technology is no longer used.

Thanks!

Watching such a report is very insightful. It shows how many of today's concepts had already been established back in the late 1960s, like interactive graphics.

A 4:00 the guy says something very important which is still true today. Even “AI” such as chatgpt can’t “think” it only channels information through the neural net as it was trained on.

I wonder if these marvelous “computers” will ever catch on?

The most striking thing about this documentary is how little things have changed since 1967.

Wow I didn’t know we were already that advanced back then!

Amazing to think that computers were speaking and playing chess BEFORE my Victorian grandfather died! R.I.P. Matt Mattinson 1884 - 1968

"Soon it will transform an age, and the future will be unthinkable without the computer." This guy said this at a time when that statement was at minimum 30 years from becoming a reality. The foresight of some people is just amazing.

1:44 - yet here recently we have AI writing "news" articles for several high-profile sites Watching these videos is just.. fascinating. They were so close to understanding what the future was going to bring but a handful of key inventions just hadn't appeared yet and so they were still so far off. They really had very little idea, in the 1960s, how much the integrated circuit would utterly change the face of computing once the microprocessor was perfected. They definitely had no idea that one day we'd be carrying computers in our pockets that are exponentially more powerful than those giant time-share computers they show in the video.

A lot of these ideas about the future of computers seem quaint today, but in '67 they were trying to do their best in projecting technology based on what we knew at the time. At 1:50, "...nor is it likely to write a story that the editor will accept"... How could people back then even conceive of AI being capable of writing news stories and novels, or beating world grand masters at chess? Computer science and technology's rise wasn't a gentle upward slope, it was a steep climb in just a few decades.

beautiful cars that year too

Keep up the GREAT work! This will help people understand where our tech of today came from, which is IMPORTANT to understand to where we are going to for our technology future.

I'm really impressed with how the things have changed in 50 or 60 years, the marvelous of technology, we had on our pockets, in the size of a transistor radio, and with a cost between U$D600 and U$D1000 devices that are lots and lots powerful in comparison with these machines that sure costs (in these days) the price of a house (please correct if I wrong), but now we use it for stupid things... Thanks for your video, greetings from Brazil!!!

It's all still here today, just a whole lot smaller, a whole lot faster, and, in some cases, a whole lot more insidious.

Thank you for presenting this video.

Man, those computer things look cool, too bad they never really caught on

“Writing a story is a task the computer may never be able to attain on its own” 😂

Damn. Thanks for this.

Informative.

If they could see what we have today. They would be in awe! I turn 60 this year. I would have never dreamed it would have come this far. It is mind boggling! And somewhat scary!

It's amazing to think that it took Human's 10,000 years to take over the Earth , and Computer Ai can do it in nearly 100 years , by 2030 we will see some major changes in life as we know it today.

"... nor is it likely to write a story as though the editor will accept." (1m48s)

Watching this as someone who, back then, was involved in computer hardware and software design, and has since also become an educator I watched this film with a slight sense of bemusement, realising how some of the pervasive misunderstandings of computers held by my generation originally arose. Some explanations, designed so carefully to be accessible to a generation largely unfamiliar with the concepts contained, in hindsight, illustrations that were easy for a lay person to misinterpret, ironically leading to a perception that the computers of the day were more powerful than they really were. For all that, this film was an entertaining watch, and at the time probably did help people to begin to try to understand some of the concepts.

Thanks for making this available. It helps to make certain concepts a lot clearer. I was particularly taken by the image of the old handset in front of the shared computer (13.51). Dial up in practice - there actually was a phone at the other end !!

As far as air traffic, I became an Air Traffic Controller in 1974. Our en-route center had the IBM 9020, essentially three IBM 360s tied together. Its purpose was to process flight plans and create paper flight progress strips. When I arrived, they were in the process of converting the display consoles to a digital display with single-site broadband radar as backup and shrimpboats. There was another huge computer in the basement that did nothing more than write the graphics and write orders generated by the 9020. I went into automation in 1986 and transitioned the computer array to the G-3, which reduced the floor space needed to less than one-fourth of the 9020. By now, I'm sure that some AI has taken over and separation instructions relayed directly to the aircraft with the controller monitoring. Walter Cronkite would be amazed at what we have now. Now, complete news stories are written by AI, biased automatically, and accepted by any news editor. In the not-too-distant future, AI may be designing and manufacturing computers and hardware that mankind will have absolutely no idea how they work. Imagine, “Colossus - The Forbin Project,” becomes an actuality wherein mankind are slaves to superior AI machines!

I worked in a large data processing center in 1967 when I was 19. I was a relative newcomer, just out of high school, and I only got to run the lowly IBM 1401. Even that 'small' computer was the size of about 6 refrigerators strapped together. Even then, the secret geek was evident in me. I used to fantasize about having my own 1401 in my basement at home. God knows what I would have used it for, but I wanted one. What would an individual back then need a computer for? Never really thought that it would actually come to pass. Probably have a dozen or so lying around the house today.

At the time all the predictions made in the footage will have sounded fantastical and exaggerated to a layman. In fact they hugely underestimated how much computer technology would impact society. At the time of the footage experts thought that the US needs maybe 10 computers. That most people one day would carry these things in their pockets was simply beyond their imagination.

Soon, the computer will allow man to make TikTok videos from the bathroom of a Walmart.

7:34 "... and finally the computer bills the patient for everything ..."

The good ol' days of analog computing... No IOT, no standard software, no viruses... Only punched paper cards

It makes it even more crazy when im watching this on my foldable 😅

There is somethingthat makes me wish Walter Cronkite talked about computers across the world. I'm just imagining him reporting on the fact that the first computer built by a private organisation for commerical use was the LEO. LEO being short for the Lyons Electronic Office. Cronkite: The use of the computer in business was not an American invention... where was it invented... well if I were to tell you that this first business computer was called the Lyons Electronic Office and that's Lyons as in J. Lyons and Company, tea merchant... I think you can already guess that this computer system is in fact British. Where else would the business of tea be so massive, copmplex and so essential to the nation, that it would require a computer to keep track of it?

Ah, banks of flashing lights and spinning tape reels. That's what missing from PC's today.

HE didn't know what he was Talking about...LMAO. I didn't watch this documentary yet. The First computers used vacuum tubes. Then, mechanical relays came into play. An array of tiny, doughnut-shaped magnets were used for storage. Transistors were a major breakthrough. The Integrated Circuit, however, with microscopic components-revolutionized Everything. Airplanes, Automobiles, All kinds of Military Technology, were changed Overnight. And, WHO would have THOUGHT that we would almost ALL have small, reasonably-priced personal computers in our HOMES?!? That's Real Jules Verne and "Jetsons" stuff.

When the computer eventually reaches independent thought, Watch the hell out !

The best part… everything about every person will be put into one computer! From credit, social, where you been and anything you do is how it is today! Zero privacy at all anymore! Sad really!

Many adults would have trouble with FORTRAN today :)

We used to be so full of wonder about what the future would bring. That excitement seems to be gone these days.

At 15:22, an analog computer is in use at Weston.

If people do not learn to get along with one another, they will get to live without computers.

13:33 Quite accurate, we got the World Wide Web and Google search by the early noughties.

Time of Change - Digital Process begins

@12:30, that Mr Piel outlines the current confidential information protection laws…

Back then, eastern city hubs seem to be the forefront of the computer.

Teaching junior high kids Fortran for their geometry class?

Pretty good, but they spent a little too much time on the classroom scene at the end, while glossing over other, more interesting aspects of the computer, such as speech production.

This was in 1967? I wish I had known about computers in 1967. Uncle Walter was right on more so than he must have thought in 1967. He wouldn't have been surprised with the internet, nor You Tube.

Love that Walter cronkite

IIRC 1967 was the year ARPANET (The precursor to the Internet) went online. 1967 IIRC was the year my parents met (Mum and Dad got married in 1969). 16:00 - 11 in 1967, that means they were born in 1956 and all of them are now 67, Baby Boomers in their early retirement years.

Punchcards

1000😀👍

Is there a band called 'Two Finger Logic'? If not there should be.

👍

I wonder if they would have continued progressing the technology if they knew it would all end up being TikTok?

Whew! Thank God computers were only a fad.

How about "Daisy🎶" HAL?

All in one handy portable unit just the size of a Howard Johnson's run by only 17 men.

Regards AI, the same music, different lyrics. Contrafactum.

These old films missed it by miles . People are getting dummer not smarter . Technology is not helping people to become better . It is helping them to become worse .

It is 2023 and the conputer really amplified the power of the human mind to unbearable heights.

In 1998, Kasparov could no longer beat Deeper Blue, in Chess. I'm a Physician, and hope that AI can provide Breakthroughs in Alzheimer's Disease and Cancer (or, that something ELSE will.) "Westworld" had Androids (and, lovely "Gynecoid" dancehall girls.) Woody Allen's "The Sleeper" had the Orgasmatron. "Space Odyssey" had "HAL" (IBM minus one letter each.)

Looks like it was all analog.

6:58... a push button for the Poor.

Computers sure were noisy, lol.

"The job of the reporter... is still something a computer will not do, nor is it likely to write a story that a city editor will accept." While it should be true, the trick here is to actually lower the standards of acceptability.

"Symbols that no human can understand" Stupid: I do !

it's kind of a shame that nobody saw the rise of computer hacking and ransomware being used to break into systems all over the world. at this point in time, it was mostly "there's a great big beautiful tomorrow"

The compuder

@12:25 Yeah, none of that happened.

talking to the lady who just gave birth about birth control. like bruh can you at least wait until she is fully conscious

Pure AI :)

One can see the Fantastic impact of Dr Martin Luther King Jr on American society because they did put some black kids in the film if the film been made 7 years before they never would have done that

How primitive.

"it turns symbols no man can understand in to the words that fills his daily newspaper". Ok, I'm done with that. But before I go 1. Really? No man can understand? Who created it? Aliens? 2. "his"? It seems women didn't read newspapers at that time. 3. "what safeguards can be established to prevent its misuse?" ... good way to begin the day: laughing.