How will new technology transform our homes - and free us from the workplace?

'One day we're going to be able to summon up information from all over the world into our own homes,' declares presenter Tom Vernon (now best remembered for his radio and TV travels as the 'fat man on a bicycle'), in this wide-eyed despatch from the early years of the IT revolution.
Part of a government-sponsored series intended to raise public awareness of the boons - and potential pitfalls - of new technology, this is an impressively thorough survey of a rapidly-changing world. Its 30 minutes whisk us through some of the just-over-the-horizon IT applications in home cooking (voice-activated recipes and diet management); home care for the elderly (computer-monitored bleepers); home education; Braille writing and reading aids for blind people; robotics; music distribution and production; video; home working and leisure.
The video is careful not to set any deadlines for its predictions, but four decades feels like time enough to judge its accuracy: and it scores surprisingly well. It helps that this is no science fiction flight of fancy; there's no jetpacks or flying cars mentioned here (but no smartphones or social media either). Instead, the focus is very much on technologies that existed or were emerging at the time - many of which would indeed become part of our everyday lives, even if they've moved on quite a bit since the early 1980s.
All the same, it's striking how some developments seen then as central to the revolution went on to disappear without trace. Or did they? The LP-sized LaserDisc may have failed to compete with the humbler but more versatile VHS tape, but essentially the same technology would re-emerge triumphantly in the more compact form of DVD and Blu Ray. Similarly, Prestel, the Post Office's TV-based information service, is barely remembered today but, like the BBC's Ceefax and ITV's Oracle, it was an early herald of our online world.
The video makes a few now-familiar exaggerated claims and false predictions, too: those laser-read discs turned out to be not quite as indestructible as we were told, while newspapers and vinyl records have defied countless gloomy forecasters.
Overall, though, the presenters err on the side of the optimistic, even to a fault: 'computers have the power to make us freer than ever before,' pronounces Vernon, speculating about how we will cope with a world in which work begins to take a back seat to leisure. It's a question many futurologists have asked since, but that world feels no closer today than it did in 1982.
Vernon and his co-presenter Griselda Cann give it a warmer, more relaxed style than the BBC's long-running science series Tomorrow's World - probably the video's closest model. But it's not the presenters but an anonymous council representative, introducing a computer-managed booking service for a leisure centre, whose words perhaps best sum up the IT revolution: 'people will wonder how they lived without it.'

The eight videos made for the 'IT82' campaign offer an accessible guide to the kind of developments beginning to be felt in the workplace, in healthcare, in services and at home. The series was produced by independent production company SPO Films and commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry's Information Technology Awareness Programme.
Though they inevitably show their age, the videos in the series are entertaining and slickly produced. The engaging scripts explain complex technology clearly, without unnecessary jargon. Despite evidence of tight budgets (notably the Spartan studio sets), much of the footage looks great, too, thanks to a surprisingly illustrious crew - including legendary cinematographer Wolfgang Suchitzky, whose credits include Get Carter (1971), and designer Anton Furst, later to work on Company of Wolves (1984), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Batman (1989).
The fine electronic score is by Alejandro Viñao and Richard Attree, who demonstrate their approach in this video.