This Week’s LinkNYC Observations

Having last written an account of trying to understand LinkNYC’s new bus arrival time feature I now suspect it has been removed from the kiosks altogether, after just a few days of appearing on what was said to be all 1000+ kiosks in the city. I think the last bus arrival time screens I saw were on Tuesday or maybe Wednesday. It is Saturday.

So with that in mind I had reason today to sit near a kiosk for about 20 minutes, while waiting for an appointment. With this otherwise idle bit of time to burn I took text-to-speech notes of what screens appeared on the kiosk at 29-26 30th Avenue in Astoria. This kiosk, by the way, looks like someone has been trying to pry it open, and it has been in that partially-disassembled state for months.

Through 64 screen changes I found that the “#ArtOnLink” screens came up the most, with 11 appearances; “NYC Facts” came up 10 times; both “City Poetry” and “On This Day” appeared 9 times. Among this sample rotation of screens I did not see a single advertisement, nor did I see AP headlines, even though those were appearing on other kiosk screens in the area.

But missing from all the kiosks I’ve seen since Wednesday is the much-ballyhooed bus arrival time screen, a feature given such a glorious Smart City reception that you’d think others besides me might have noticed its sudden absence. But then why would anyone notice? It was information no one needed and that blinked by so fast it was almost impossible to be certain what you’d just seen.

We shall see if the MTA bustime feature returns in a more elegant and meaningful form, or if it has in fact only gone missing from the kiosks I happen to have encountered since Wednesday.

Also missing from this and many kiosks I see are what were expected to be the blood supply for this program: Advertising. This kiosk did not show a single ad in 64 screen changes, and the same seems true for a majority of the kiosks I pass. I find that unfortunate because, unlike a lot of observers, I do not have a problem with the advertising as it has been put forth on these screens. The advertising visuals are, for the most part, far more beautiful than the NYC Facts and other screens, which look like something from a corporate Power Point presentation.

This posting at the West Side Rag was the basis for a reasonably interesting dialog (in the comments section) about LinkNYC, the so-called “payphone of the future”, and what people outside the Smart City propaganda continuum really think of them. I don’t know anybody (besides myself) who uses LinkNYC kiosks in any form, so it was interesting and a bit gratifying to see real-world comments that mirror my own experiences with these things.

A number of commenters described LinkNYC WiFi experiences similar to mine, and similar to the few people I know who attempted to connect to it. Like almost anything else to do with these kiosks, sometimes the WiFi works, sometimes it does not. I attempted to connect on only two occasions. Once was soon after the first kiosks appeared on Third Avenue in early 2016. I do not remember the downloads coming through particularly quickly. More recently I tried connecting to several kiosks using a Galaxy Note 5, a device I was getting rid of so I treated it like a burner phone. Sometimes connections were fast as hell, other times not so much, and there were a number of times when I could not connect at all.

I have no experience with the network’s claim that, once you connect to one kiosk’s WiFi, your device will automatically connect to every kiosk you pass, though I do seem to remember that feature being functional when I connected a couple of years ago.

I might have offered my thoughts on this question if I didn’t think it unlikely that anyone would actually see my response:

The LinkNYC folks are, by contract, obligated to install 7,500 kiosks. That number comes from the alleged quantity of payphones that inhabited NYC’s sidewalks a few years ago. Links are supposed to replace every one of those 7,500 payphones, and even supplement that number with as many as 10,000 kiosks.

But I think it looks like LinkNYC ran into a problem with placement of the kiosks. Rules state that kiosks must be placed no less than 50 feet apart from each other. I don’t know if this rule was just waived or if LinkNYC is willfully ignoring it but I’ve seen numerous instances of units placed within what had to be less than 50 feet of each other. I am not going to bring out a tape measure to prove anything, since calling them out on violations of the 50-foot rule would result in nothing.

I think a placement problem arose from how the old payphones were (and still are) often found in clusters of 2 or more phones right next to each other. The most payphones I’ve seen all in a row like that was 5, but I understand there is or used to be a row of 6 somewhere in Brooklyn. If LinkNYC is to replace 5 or 6 payphones in a row they have to do it by installing kiosks in spots where payphones never existed, because they cannot put 5 or 6 of these monoliths all in a row right next to each other like the payphones – although it would not surprise me if they did. So this might explain why you see clusters of kiosks across the street and right around the corner from each other, with 5, 6, 7, even 8 kiosks at single intersections. With an alleged WiFi signal range of at least 150 feet this would seem to be overkill but the deal they made with the city mandates that the quantity of payphones be replaced in total, however ludicrously concentrated certain clusters of kiosks end up being.

Further to this problem of reaching 7,500 to 10,000 kiosks are zoning rules that prevent these things from being installed in purely residential neighborhoods. The rules prohibit display advertising in such areas. In its earliest days the folks behind the program promised that areas where display advertising was prohibited would be given advertising-free kiosks, slender towers minus the 55” screens but with the smaller tablet screen and, of course, free WiFi. They might have thought these devices would make it easier to reach 10,000 installations, but now it looks like these advertising-free kiosks will never even be produced, and I for one question if CityBridge’s promise to do this was known to be hollow when they made it.

But getting back to the above-linked story and its comments: There are predictable volleys of condescension and name-calling in the comments, but with a twist. The name-calling was directed not just at other commentators but also at people like me who these commenters might have seen using the kiosks. For simply being seen using one of these things it appears I might be lumped together with the “drug addicts” and “bums” of LinkNYC that make the traditionally derided payphone user look like upstanding members of society.

I can safely say those names do not apply to me, at least I don’t think they do. I may be bummed by a lot of things but I’m no bum. But from my own observations there is no question where the stereotypes come from. Most often when I see anyone at a kiosk there is something off about it. At one kiosk a dude was singing and dancing, tapping at the tablet screen almost maniacally. What is wrong with that, you ask? The tablet did not work, and I don’t think it has ever worked since that kiosk was installed over a year ago. The dude was strung out on something, and as I passed I caught a whiff of strong alcohol.

Even with open Internet access removed I still see people monopolizing kiosks, especially around Herald Square and on Eighth Avenue. Some people who appear to be dialing phone numbers at random, while others hit the 911 button and run off.

The people I honestly feel bad for are those who use the kiosks to make legitimate phone calls, not to mention those unfortunate enough to have a kiosk installed right outside their living room window. Unlike the traditional payphones these kiosks are replacing there is no handset on a LinkNYC kiosk, and the difference in call quality between the two devices is radically different on account of it. The acoustical quality of a payphone handset is such that a lot of surrounding noises are muffled, allowing a payphone caller’s voice to be heard over the sounds of car horns honking and even subways roaring past overhead. With LinkNYC the sound of your voice is handled no differently than everything else going on in the aural environment. On account of this the caller basically has to scream to be heard, even when the surrounding noises might not seem so loud to human ears.

Beyond the stereotypes and the screaming phone callers I also see LinkNYC users who are, for lack of a better word, “normal” – whatever the hell that means. I see groups of young kids using them to charge phones or make prank phone calls (just like on the old payphones), there are everyday-looking people charging their phones, and I lost count of how many times I saw very young kids reach up and press the 911 button. In the early days of the kiosks simply hitting that button was all it took to connect to a 911 dispatcher, whose obligation it was to keep the connection open until a battery of diagnostics was performed to determine that no emergency was taking place. But the last time I saw a little kid reach up and press the 911 button I heard the kiosk’s loudspeaker play a sternly worded pre-recorded lecture about how it is illegal to call 911 when no emergency is in progress. The pre-recorded voice then invited you to hit the 911 button again if you are for real. Older kids and adults might be deterred by something like this but such an announcement would probably not register with a 4- or 5-year old.

I would like to know if, in that situation, the 911 dispatcher has access to the kiosk’s front-facing camera, which is allegedly disabled for now but reserved for future use in making video phone calls (what could possibly go wrong with that?). 911 probably does not have that access but granting 911 dispatchers the ability to activate the camera might actually make sense as a deterrent to making bad 911 calls. Imagine the look on a fake 911 caller’s face when pressing the button instantly opened up a 2-way video call between whoever pressed the button and a live 911 dispatcher whose face appeared on the screen, informing whoever present that they were being recorded. 911 could turn on all the cameras, including the surveillance cameras on top, to potentially identify culprits behind errant calls as they run off, or even as they approached the kiosk. For that to work the cameras would have to constantly be recording and saving video, or at least buffering several minutes worth should it be needed.

I sometimes feel self-conscious being seen using one of these things, not just because of what people say about LinkNYC users online but because I hear the whispers and I see the looks from people around me when I step up to one of them. It does not happen every single time but I’ve heard groups of high school kids fall silent when they see me standing at a kiosk. I cannot hear the content of their whispers but I have to think that they see me and think “He is poor” or “He is a crusty”, a term I was unfamiliar with in its usage as a derogatory until LinkNYC came along.

A few comments in the above-linked story refer to LinkNYC users as “addicts”. What are we addicted to? The Aunt Bertha app? Making random phone calls to strangers?

Now the small world of LinkNYC watchers awaits next month’s release of what is promised to be a real time status report of which kiosks works and which do not. This confirms my hunch, which I found impossible to believe was true, that this network was designed such that remote monitoring of its kiosks’ functionality and availability was not implemented. That leaves me dumbfounded. Even the old payphones had polling ability, allowing the phone’s owners to check in on the status of the phone, how much money it had made, etc.

This real-time monitoring of LinkNYC kiosks shouldn’t put out of a job the human inspectors who, it is claimed, maintain each and every kiosk twice a week. If the kiosks can be monitored and, presumably, maintained from a remote command bunker the human inspectors would still be needed to peel off the strips of tape placed over the kiosks’ cameras by anti-surveillance activists.

But as with the bus arrival time feature, until I see it I think I’ll stay skeptical about this apparent gesture of openness and transparency, as well as LinkNYC’s ability to even make it happen.

I have to ask what kind of real-world usage anyone thinks this dataset will attract. If you have access to the dataset, or to an app based on the dataset, then you have access to the Internet and probably a phone. It is hard to imagine why you would rather be doing anything on a kiosk. If the data include locations where the WiFi actually works and at what speeds then I could see where that might be useful to somebody. Maybe. But this seems like another example of creating the product from the top down, without soliciting public input or getting a sense of things from the kiosks’ user base.

I also suspect this real-time monitoring might lead to unintended consequences making it possible for phone calls to be eavesdropped on and other activity on the apps be tailed in real time.