| Looking back in Time to find the present future. |
Also, what’s a “teleputer”? Anyway, innacuracies are to be expected from a 12-year-old issue of Time, but I only bring it up because I was obsessed with the issue as a child. I wanted to “touch cyberspace” as one article claimed I would be able to. It came to mind recently, leading me first to read it on microfiche at the downtown central library, and then order it on eBay so I could look at the graphics in full color. What made me remember it was one of my new favorite blogs, Paleo-Future. They recently posted a series of promotional videos that AT&T produced in that same early moment of the Internet that this magazine was born out of, and it made me long for that forgotten vision of a streamlined, virtual world, bogged down by the tacky clean aesthetics of early ’90s corporate culture. Here’s another wonderful AT&T ad from 1993 about what life will be like in the future: AT&T seemed to be highly invested in the drafting of that future vision in those years, as the “Welcome to Cyberpsace” issue is entirely sponsored by that company, with one extended, episodic AT&T ad found throughout the magazine rather than the usual variety of ads found in Time. The ads each take a fairy tale character and update their story with the magical future cyberspace technology that AT&T was boasting about at the time. I’ve scanned a couple of the ads for your viewing pleasure: 
Click for the larger version. Each of the characters in this photo had their own one or two page ad later on in the magazine, highlighting another application of AT&T (and ostensibly, The Internet)’s capabilities. 
This one was an editorial collage representing what the Internet “looked like.” Oh, how I wanted to go to that place in 1995. And I still do. |
“Welcome to Cyberspace!” declared Time in 1995, when they published a special issue introducing its readers to the hot-button issue of the “information superhighway”. Approaching this strange new technology cautiously, with hyperbole abound, the issue attempted to break things down with a veritable lexicon of new vocabulary that failed to catch on. For instance: 
one day babe one day you will
that collage is amazing….so i was surfing the web (ha) and stumbled upon this: http://www.pigradio.com. it is amazing! i had bought pig magazine in italy and really enjoyed it and the radio show is evern better. oh, i got your message and i will be waiting for your call lover…
I’m obsessed with this stuff, too. That and outer space. I don’t know anything about the science of it all, but it’s crazy knowing there’s a planet out there like ours and maybe black holes that can take us there.