How Huawei Wrongly Predicted The Technological Advancement In 2020

When you were a child, 2020 must have been so far away. However, as we are getting closer to that year, it may be fun to take a look at our prediction for it. The world’s biggest telecommunication firm Huawei made a video with its own prediction about what 2020 might look like. And awkward is the least we could say about the video.

The company posted it on its official YouTube channel back in 2010, showing optimism about things like huge semi-transparent displays, self-driving cars, and solar power that would be all around us.

First, viewers will start with the 2020 Olympic Games, in which you’ll see someone that won a swimming contest. As the swimmer gets out of the pool, he activates an armband that could be a projector used to create a semi-transparent display in the air. The display seems to be inspired by Minority Report, a movie from 2002, but the video doesn’t explain how the screen works.

Additionally, the video shows stations for collecting solar power on the side of some highway, which is far more in line with the present technological reality.

Then, the scenes move to a woman in an autopiloted car, answering her videophone-enabled windshield. Currently, concepts of autopilot are controversial with the help of companies like Tesla. However, the video begins to fall apart from a story-telling perspective. The swimmer mentioned above and the woman wasn’t at the game, she wasn’t even watching it anywhere else.

“Wahhh! You got the medal! Congratulations,” says she. And though she’s not controlling the vehicle manually, the screens seem to block her view, which is weird.

Next, the clip introduces brings in another character playing chess on a wide device. He receives a call from his doctor and they talk a little then the character scans his own eyes. “So doc, am I still a superman?” he asks. The injured man gets a called from the swimmer and the congratulations go again.

Then, the swimmer pushes an area on the projection which seems cartoonish. It’s unclear if his video is being shown in an artificial environment of it’s a failure in animating a crowd.

The video then moves to another part of the world in which there are several old people sitting outside. An old man reading a device similar to a newspaper with his eye movement being tracked. It seems that the movement tracking helps him move content on the display without having to touch the device.

But next, he touched the display to answer a call probably from his son. “What’s up?” said the father, “did you finish the game?” says the mother before the son, the swimmer, holds up the gold medal.

“Let’s go inside to see a clearer picture of this,” says the old man. The weird part here is that the parents have all the technologies surrounding them but do not find out about their son’s victory until after he calls.

You can see it for yourself here.

Tech firms love making videos like this, including AT&T with “Connections” in 1993, GTE with “Classroom of the Future” in 1988, and Pacific Bell with its concept video in 1991. It looks like they want to make people excited about the future and these videos are often amusing.

2020 will come in the next few months and obviously we won’t have flying cars or jetpacks, a bit sad considering all the expectations in such videos.