That news report is fantastic! Over here we had a weekly show called Tomorrow’s World which regularly demonstrated what the producers of the show clearly felt were the most cutting edge inventions of the day. Some of the inventions were legendary - they appealed to everyone but clearly were impossible to actually realise so the only time anyone ever saw them was on that TV show!
On a side note: your mention of CompuServe reminded me of when a friend of mine brought a 2 way pager back from the US in the 90s, not realising that the phone networks over here would never cater for them…