Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/15/unintentionally-funny-voice-ov.html
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It was so nice of Shiva Ayyadurai to allow DEC to use EMAIL in this tech demo a few months before he started working on it.
ETA: Okay, not DEC. ISI NSC.
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How can we be sure this isn’t a spoof from the “Look Around You” team?
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Real-time Speak & Spell audio encoding. Impressive.
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Those last shots… the guy is regressing to a traumatic moment involving a sailboat. Something not good judging by his expression.
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I interpreted that shot as him thinking about a life without a crappy job that necessitates he take conference calls while on vacation.
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If only a portable device with these ‘digital’ capabilities could be invented, then I could spend more time interacting with my family. Yes, what a perfect idea.
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In 1978, researchers were conducting early experiments in group teleconferencing using packet switching over the ARPANET, which became the basis of the Internet.’
This isn’t widely known, but when the researchers left their labs for the day they were frequently accosted by ad network representatives trying to convince them to code in some audio Calgon ads and whatnot.
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… and 41 years later dorks watch this demonstration over the decedent of arpanet.
Also the quality is quite a bit better than we get these days with cellphone audio codec’s.
“The meeting participants are late, unprepared and frustrated, the audio quality is terrible and nothing is accomplished except the scheduling of another meeting.”
No matter how much technology changes, people, will always remain the same…
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I like the (pre?)-GTE logo at 2 min 49 sec. GTE was, relatively speaking, a good place to work, but especially during the brief period between when I was hired and the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 – i.e., when the rest of the company wasn’t allowed to bother us. The merger that created Verizon in 2000 fairly much sent any remaining fun down the Bemis.
I wondered if he forgot to moor his vessel and was watching it float off with the current.
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The whole meeting does feel like we’re moments away from THE HELVETICA SCENARIO
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The director of this film sounds like she was a pretty incredible person…
http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2001/Nov-2001/11_08_01_Services_Friday_for_Longtime_Tenant_Activist.htm
Poor guy. So traumatized he couldn’t even remember that nodding on a phone call doesn’t work!
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Danny Cohen (the guy missing his boat, and the fully intentional genius behind the humor of this skit) had a very thick accent and was completely unintelligible before voice compression. He was dubbed here, which is why you never actually see him speak.
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He’d just come from shooting the AT&T Future ads. 
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I was thinking of this:
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I’m not sure “uninetntionaly funny” is entirely fair.
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Computers were so scary looking back then. All the equipment looked like something a James Bond villain or mad scientist would use to take over the world. Very intimidating. I could not get into computers until IBM came out with the modular desktop design and Hewlett Packard brought out inkjet printers.
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