If you've ever stood on a New York City street corner, jabbing away at the button that's supposed to make the light turn, watching as it doesn't and feeling increasingly powerless and frustrated, turns out there's a good reason why: The city disconnected the vast majority of the buttons years ago. The timing of traffic lights and cross signals in New York has since the 1970s been controlled by a vast network of super-intelligent cyborgs (or something, I'm a little shaky on the details), rendering more than 2500 of the city's 3250 "Walk" buttons inoperable. The city has chosen to keep this information to itself as part of a continuing initiative to "narcotize the populace into believing they have some small measure of autonomy." (This may not be the city's official position. I'm a little shaky on the details.)
February 28, 2004
Bill Barol
I'm a freelance writer in Santa Monica, Ca. But what I really want to do is not get paid for blogging.
So you mean that there's still a 23% chance that I'm NOT wasting my time and precious button-pressing energy, not that I even have a good handle on what the definition of "working" would be with regards to the Walk Buttons? I like those odds!
Posted by: Ken Goldstein | March 01, 2004 at 12:25 PM