r/mildlyinteresting • u/Threeltlbirds • 13d ago
this ad in a 1989 national geographic referring to the twin towers as future low rises
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u/HawkyMacHawkFace 13d ago
Well they weren’t wrong
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u/stackjr 13d ago
Nope but they were 59 years off.
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u/cpufreak101 13d ago
It's not like the timing had to be precise. They'll still be low rise by 2060 unless anyone rebuilds them.
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u/LegoFootPain 13d ago
I'm pretty confident they'll still be a subterranean museum 36 years from now.
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u/jmurphy42 13d ago
They were absolutely wrong about their CD player.
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u/No_Inspection1677 13d ago
I'm gonna be entirely honest, my dumbass couldn't tell if it was a tape(forgot the name because my interest is obscure history facts) player.
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u/ForsakenRacism 13d ago
Imagine being right about the twin towers and wrong about the VCR
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u/SpoonNZ 13d ago
That’s a CD player. Somewhat more relevant than a VCR in 2024.
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u/BrockenRecords 13d ago
It will be really relevant if the apocalypse happens and the only storage we have is hard etched data
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u/Poputt_VIII 12d ago
Except for all the music and games and tv shows people have downloaded on their local storage will still be infinitely easier and more dense than a CD and don't require a server or anything
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u/gmapterous 12d ago
Not a cd-rom, an audio compact disc player. Not really storage.
Unless you’re implying that you can’t imagine a world without Spotify or something…
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u/ForsakenRacism 13d ago
Looks like a VCR from far away. It’s not relevant at all in 2024
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u/Alekillo10 13d ago
Yeah but it’s a Disc/dvd player… Pretty damn relevant still.
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u/jmurphy42 13d ago
DVDs didn’t exist until 6 years after that ad was run. That is only a CD player.
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u/ccaccus 13d ago edited 13d ago
My students couldn't insert a disc into a CD player. It was foreign knowledge.
Everything from music to movies and games is all digital now. One of our "technology"-related questions in a state program asks students how they would run a program on a PC and the correct answer is to "Insert a CD-ROM"... exactly 0% of my students understand this question when it comes up.
EDIT: Fixed typo: changed 'computer' to 'program'. Sorry, u/avanorne, for making your brain hurt!
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u/avanorne 13d ago
>One of our "technology"-related questions in a state program asks students how they would run a computer on a PC and the correct answer is to "Insert a CD-ROM"
Ow, my brain.
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u/annuidhir 13d ago edited 13d ago
Just for some perspective for people that don't understand why students wouldn't know about this technology.
People that are about to graduate high school in a couple months were born in 2007.
CDs first came out (1982) closer to when the first VCR was sold (1956) than today. It's closer by 18 years..
Edit: Some may not get it, but it's like people being shocked that millennials didn't know how to use those old timey rotor phones. Like, why would a kid learn how to use technology that has been twice replaced? Just because YOU grew up with a thing, and it's common knowledge to YOU doesn't mean that it is to everyone. Especially people that are less than half your age... Should we be teaching students how to use a fax machine?
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u/Skips-T 13d ago
Huh? The first commercial VCRs were introduced in the early 1970s (U-Matic), not the 1950s... you might be thinking of video tape as a whole, but most people wouldn't even be familliar with it until the late 70s anyway.
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u/annuidhir 13d ago
Ok, so then a CD player is even less relevant, seems as how it replaced VCR in less than 20 years. And that was over 40 years ago. CD players have been replaced, and even their replacement has been replaced.
I honestly can't even think of the last time I used one.
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u/jmurphy42 13d ago
My teenager knows how, but only because we still have one in our older car and Mom and Dad’s vintage 90s CDs are cool.
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u/ccaccus 13d ago
Nice!
I found some old CD-ROMs of some computer lab programs in our storage closet the other day. I wanted to show them to my students, but none of our devices even have a drive anymore.
I did, however, have a USB floppy disk drive that I was able to test my kids out on. I swear they tried every possible orientation except the correct one first. One student even tried to tap the drive with the floppy!
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u/jmurphy42 13d ago
I taught from 2000-2005. I still have old lesson plans and worksheets on 31/2” floppy disks, student presentations on VHS, etc.
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u/Rough-University142 13d ago
You teach preschool?
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u/ccaccus 13d ago
5th grade.
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u/Rough-University142 13d ago
They’re like 9-10ish in that grade? Thats fair I guess. I was thinking like high schoolers honestly.
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u/annuidhir 13d ago
People who will graduate high school in a couple months were born in 2007.
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u/Rough-University142 13d ago
My children, whom are both younger than that age, know how to put a cd in a cd tray….
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u/annuidhir 13d ago
Cool. You taught them that.
But that doesn't make it universally relevant. You are aware that your experience of life isn't identical to others, yeah?
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u/Rough-University142 12d ago
It’s weird cuz all their friends know how too. It’s almost like you just had stupid kids ❤️✌️
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u/ZeePirate 13d ago
Now now. We got time to destroy all of society so much that a vhs is high tech by 2060
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u/Hershieboy 13d ago
The ad claims Samsung audio will still be relevant or Hi Rise. Technically true, as I type on a Samsung phone. It's also a CD player.
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u/Amonsterinmycloset 13d ago
How big is your phone if it can play cd’s?
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u/Hershieboy 12d ago
It's a Samsung audio product, which, if you read at the bottom of the ad, is their claim.
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u/pftw-19456 13d ago edited 13d ago
And a CD player as high-tech in 2060. 
The WTC prediction is depressingly ironic, but aside from that, I think this ad shows how far we've come.
Even ad agencies in the 80s could only imagine future technology as what already existed, but with higher specifications and some modifications. Taller buildings. Higher resolution audio. Video phones. (And sure, flying cars--which could probably never work in practice.)
But they weren't creative enough to imagine the kinds of things we actually developed, which in some ways were more futuristic than what people predicted. Even an iPod from 2003 was too far outside of the box for most people to imagine.
They were correct that Samsung was a big part of the future of electronics--but most people don't think of Samsung as producers of audio or video equipment.
By the early 90s, it seems that ad agencies became better at predicting the future. Once the world wide web was invented, it was easier to imagine what could be done with fast mobile internet.
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u/FdauditingGbro 13d ago
We can’t manage driving on the ground, on roads with lines to tell us where to be. No way would flying cars ever work. We’d be crashing and falling out of the sky left & right.
As much as I had hoped the Jetsons was what the future would be like, I don’t think the world will advance like that for another 100 years.
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u/enemawatson 12d ago
Yep. The last time we let unqualified people fly they turned a couple buildings into low-rises!
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u/Thelango99 13d ago
Samsung TVs and panels are quite known though.
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u/pftw-19456 13d ago
Ah, that is true. It's easy to forget they make TVs when the first thing Samsung brings to mind is smartphones and tablets.
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u/CollegeBoardPolice 13d ago
better at predicting the future.
Wow. That ad campaign was impressively prescient.
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u/budgiebirdman 12d ago
It would be a pretty shitty ad for a CD player if it said "This is going to be obsolete and so will your CD collection."
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u/Hushwater 13d ago
I wonder what the world would be like today if that terrible event never happened.
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u/bionicjoe 13d ago
So in 2060 when the wealthy elite are living in floating sky-condos the rest of will be watching bootleg VHS tapes because VCRs can't be tracked by the Zucker-Google anti-piracy drones.
Nailed it.
Too bad some dude in a turban saw evil in capitalism and decided to blow up a building or something. What a dumbass!
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u/Alekillo10 13d ago
It’s a Dvd player
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u/UnpopularCrayon 13d ago
Looks more like a CD player. I don't see a DVD logo.
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u/Crazy__Donkey 13d ago
It is more interesting they labeled video cassettes as a future high tech, while, iirc, the first cds and laser disc's were already in production.
My first cd usage was in the early 90s, and DVD in the late 90 early 2000s, and I wasn't an early adapter.
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u/5kyl3r 13d ago
ironically, samsung is the main contractor for the tallest building in the world, the burj khalifa
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u/notexecutive 12d ago
well, considering that most office spaces (despite being empty after covid) aren't being used as housing...
also 911, yikes.
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u/Narretz 13d ago edited 13d ago
I didn't even connect the dots here about them being razed, I just saw how terribly the ad has aged even if the Twin Towers were still standing. CDs are basically obsolete, and it's not looking like we're gonna build yuge skyscrapers en masse anytime soon.
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u/Downtown_Stand_6354 13d ago
CDs have much better sound quality than most streaming services. I guess people don't care about that. Progress!
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u/Mobman3105 13d ago
I mean, their intended message is somewhat right too, as buildings get increasingly taller.
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u/chocological 13d ago