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Watch this: AT&T's 'Challenge of Change,' a vision of the future in 1961

Watch this: AT&T's 'Challenge of Change,' a vision of the future in 1961

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Phones and satellites may not very inspiring to hordes of hyper-connected people born in the age of cellphones and the world wide web, but for earlier generations, they represented beacons of progress and hope for a better future.

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Challenge of change
Challenge of change

"Do you know what this is? It is a man, talking to a machine. And this is a machine... talking to a machine."

Phones and satellites may not very inspiring to hordes of hyper-connected people born in the age of cellphones and the world wide web, but for earlier generations, they represented beacons of progress and hope for a better future. AT&T's short Challenge of Change film highlights the looming technological advances of the day, challenging viewers to open their minds to change: the narrator explains that "today we must speed up our recognition of change... for even as you watch this, the pace grows swifter, the minutes crowd more closely." The video covers futuristic systems like the wireless Bellboy Pager, the Data-phone, the videophone, and the card-reading dialer — with plenty of accompanying vignettes involving serious businessmen in serious suits with serious problems to solve. Today's businesspeople may have different gadgets and different wardrobes, but if there's one constant, it's the optimism that comes with viewing the technology of tomorrow as a solution to human problems.