New, New Times Square

New, New Times Square

Tokyo ... suck it!

After being away from the Big Apple for twelve years we moved to nearby New Jersey in 2006. On a visit to the City one evening we drove through the Times Square area. And then around some familiar neighborhoods. 

What a surprise. Shock really. Corporate commerce everywhere. So many people. So many. In Times Square, tourists spread liberally like jam on toast. Traffic moving across Broadway at 44th Street as slow as a chicken trying to lay an overlarge egg. [What? You think I should have just said "Molasses"?]

Also, the signage. Times Square has always been famous for it's bright lights, it's big billboard signs. I once worked in the area right across from the Bond Building when Camel cigarettes featured that famous guy blowing smoke rings into the air. The once remembered charm of the historic buildings is now papered over with billboards. Mostly, razed for sleek slab sided efficiencies. I once had my office at 1515 Broadway when it was the Grant Building. My view was from the 23 floor facing north. Directly across the street I enjoyed seeing what must have been a pre-WWI multi-story office building. Brownstone, if I recall right. You know the kind, bay windows, maybe a turret or two; narrow hallways with solid wood shiny varnished office doors with hand lettering in gold outlined in black on pebble textured wavy no-see-through privacy glass. Mail slots near the bottom. Transoms over every door. Lots of wood inside too. Paneling, door and window trim, furniture, file cabinets. Mickey Spillane kind of stuff. Tin Pan Alley songsters. Assorted small circulation magazine publishers. 

Only now, there aren't any more those paper billboards lit with regular incandescent bulbs on fixtures jutting outside. Or, neon. They're lit from inside! High tech. Video monitors writ large. BRIGHT! Motion. Changing in whichever way the guys with their hands on the levers decide. Them guys are not really some grungy nerds in some dank cellar, or even some well scrubbed, over-educated Young Turks. Really, just some algorithms cooked up by said fellows, and running on AI all by themselves. Big Brother knows best.

Algorithms. It's the thing. If you haven't noticed. Like this: I looked up "mousetraps" on a search and now all I'm seeing is ads for mousetraps. Nude midgets. Hey, don't judge. That's on account of algorithms. They know what you want. They give you what you want. They tell you what you want. Did you think Rise of the Machine was gonna look like some big contraption? It is a contraption, for sure. Just a conceptual one. In binary digits of 0's and 1's. A bit of this, a bit of that. You and me, we're baked into a pie. And, it's for sale. We're commodities now. 

So, just thinking about the next new, new thing over in Times Square; what will it be? If my rummaging around online is being sifted through an algorithm for the kindly, unselfish purpose of providing me with whatever the F I may be wanting, how about bringing that utility in real time right there while I'm strolling the dirty boulevard. BTW ... it's not nearly so dirty as when I first arrived in the Big Apple. Then it was: Grant's. Jean "Shep" Shephard up late nights on "Radio Free Broadway". Porno movie houses up and down 42nd Street. Peep shows you entered through narrow doorways tucked here and there. [Not me, but it was a thing.] Guys pushing little sheets of paper with ads for what seemed like a zillions of massage parlors. "Check it out!" Later, after prohibiting laws were passed, we had the sanitized "Rap Parlors". Yes, for a few bucks you could go and talk with a naked lady [I assume]. That's my kind of Times Square! Walkin' on the Wild Side. Love to hate it.

Anyway ... Real Time Interactive Signage. How's that gonna work? You know that chip they inserted into you? That chip. You don't have the chip? Wasamattawidya? Get the chip!

For more on the "chip" subject. Read here.

That cute little you-almost-don't-even-know-it's-there chip, it says everything about you. Vitals. GPS. History. Resume. The naughty, and the nice. But, the real beauty of it ... what you're thinking. And, based on what you've been thinking, what you're gonna be thinking. Brave New World. Aldous Huxley ... what he described is for pussies. We're in the 21st Century, boy! Belly up to the AI bar. Take your seat. And, we already know what your "usual" is so no need to deal with the barkeep. And, we know when you'll arrive at said barstool so that little drinkypoo will be there nice and freshly poured at the exact moment you platz. Prepaid, since your bankcard is on file too. 

So there you are, strolling Broadway. Holy Cow! As you look up at any perticular signage — in real time mind you — you'll see exactly what the all-knowing, all-seeing algorithm knows you should see. Coordinated ever so adroitly to coincide with the nearest place you can go to get said necessity. And, if it's a bit of a drive, you'll get a Uber in a jiffy to give you a Lift to said source of your next transitory happiness. And, so on. Down the road. A sort of bend over, we know this'll be good for ya kind of world.

Listen. This is not some idle speculation. The tech is in hand. Just now need the will to set it in motion. Of course, the basis for such a decision will be what's called monetization. In other words, what's in it for me.

I know. What a cynic I am. I was a Mad Ave Ad Biggie, so cynicism is part of the job requirement. 

There's hope. 

Just be here now. Where else can I be, you may say. Be here now ... as in, just that; nothing else. No algorithm can get you now. In the NOW. It's only designed to operate in the past, and in the future. Which, you may have noticed doesn't exist. 

The way out of dragging the past, and concerning about the future: WAKE THE F UP!