How Walter Cronkite described the home office of the 21st century

For a video that’s over 45 years old, it comes pretty close to describing the realities of the 21st century home office.

The multiple screens are a nice touch, though not for the right reasons. They anticipated different devices based on purpose rather than form. Having a pair of computer monitors, an iPad, and smartphones may not have been part of the original vision, but they understood the direction of the future well enough. They knew that most everything would be digitally rendered from telephones to newspapers to stock reports. They anticipated that for many, the “work would come to the home” rather than making the trips to the office that so many had to do back then (and unfortunately, that many still have to do today).

They also realized that it would be invaluable. That’s important. In many of these predicting videos from the past, they held on to notions that people would be connected only part of the time. They didn’t realize that we would be online and interacting with our computers even when we’re doing, well, everything.