Most people probably know Arthur C. Clarke as the science fiction writer responsible for 2001: A Space Odyssey. But he was also a science writer and inventor.

Back in 1976, Clarke gave an interview at a tech conference held by MIT and AT&T, gave his thoughts on where the future of technology was headed. And it turns out he was fairly accurate.

Introduced as "the man responsible for communication satellites" (he proposed such a system in 1945), Clarke theorized on the development of technologies, that amount to very good explanations of what we know as of the Internet, e-mail and even the smartwatch (or "wristwatch telephone" as he calls it).

"The telephone is the only way we can communicate outside yet. We get a lot of communication inwards from the radio and TV," he says in the video AT&T unearthed from its archives and posted on its tech channel on YouTube on Feb. 3. "But we're going to get devices which will enable us to send much more information to our friends. They'll be able to see us, we'll be able to see them, you will...exchange picture, pictorial information, graphical information, data, books, and so forth."

And when asked what would be the ideal communications device, he says it would have a high-definition TV screen and a typewriter keyboard. Through it you would be able to send messages, make calls, get any kind of information you want, from airline flights, what's at the grocery store, books you want to read and news you could filter by searches.

"The machine will hunt the main central library and bring all this to you, selectively," he adds, "just what you want, not the junk when you buy two or three pounds of wood pulp which is the newspaper."

Later on in the video, he talks about what could be described as the smartwatch. He admits that the "wristwatch radio" was first seen in the Dick Tracy comics but that it could become a reality.

"The wristwatch telephone will be technologically feasible very soon," he says. "And so the telephone will no longer be sort of fixed in one place. It could be completely mobile."

You can watch the full video below. Mobile users click here.