Computers Promised to Free Us. What Happened?

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here. During the 1984 Super Bowl, an advertisement launched a technological revolution. If you were alive, you probably know the one. Directed by Ridley Scott, the minute-long spot showed men in gray uniforms, heads shaved, eyes blank, marching in unison toward a lifeless auditorium. A Big Brother figure speaks from a giant screen, droning on about “the first glorious…