THE FUTURE AS SEEN IN 1980 | A DAVID HOFFMAN DOCUMENTARY

This 1980 prime-time television documentary, directed by David Hoffman and featuring interviews with futurists including John Kenneth Galbraith, Henry Kissinger, and Ernest Boyer, envisions the dawn of the Information Age through emerging technologies like personal computers, video conferencing, and digital networks. Hoffman, traveling across the U.S. and Europe, captures predictions of a connected world where information becomes the dominant resource, transforming work, education, and society—anticipating home offices, online learning, and data-driven economies decades before their widespread adoption. The 60-minute film blends optimistic forecasts with concerns over privacy, job displacement, and inequality, using archival footage of early Silicon Valley innovators and demonstrations of prototypes like the Xerox Alto. Produced during a pivotal moment for Hoffman as a filmmaker, it reflects 1980s excitement about computing's potential to reshape human interaction, with many visions remarkably prescient amid the Cold War's technological race.