LinkNYC: Really Beautifying the Neighborhood

I spotted this headache-inducing advertising panel in Astoria today. It would be cool if it actually segued into an intelligible advertisement but nothing so clever is happening here. It’s just another bugged out LinkNYC kiosk.

Coincidentally it was just last night that Twitter user @nite0wl posted this video, showing an upper west side LinkNYC kiosk that was similarly blasting visual noise for all to enjoy:

It would really, truly suck to have something like this right outside your living room window, as is the case with the screen I saw in the first video above. There are a number of apartments here with windows that look straight out at this particular kiosk.

It was a fitting find on a day when I found only 2 LinkNYC kiosks out of about 12 that had any functionality besides serving ads and Public Service Announcements. Even kiosks activated just a few days ago have no network connection or ability to make phone calls, access maps, etc. There are tablets on some kiosks that have not worked for weeks, months, even a year. I’d be willing to bet that on most of those non-working kiosks the 911 emergency call button does not work, either.

This, we are told, is progress. But as often as not in technology this thing called progress comes with great compromise. LinkNYC is replacing payphones with devices that frequently cannot make phone calls or do anything but serve advertisements and litter the community with malfunctioning visual pollution.

This is what will replace and supplement all the payphones in New York — all of them. To be sure, payphones were not without their problems either. Ad panels came unhooked, phone calls were frequently impossible to make for whatever reason, or vandals smashed the glass. But those failures were not quite as spectacular as what LinkNYC is capable of.

I predict there will come a day when many if not all of the LinkNYC kiosks throughout New York look something like the two seen in these videos.