The New Free Public WiFi Kiosks In NYC Are Great In Theory, But A Disaster Just Waiting To Happen
Bloomberg- The future is on the corner of 15th Street and 3rd Avenue. There looms one of two Link NYC kiosks unveiled Tuesday, which will provide free one-gigabyte WiFi to anyone in roughly a 150 foot radius. The other 9-and-a-half-foot tall slab is two blocks away on 17th Street.
The city plans on blanketing all five boroughs with 4,550 pillars over the next four years, and a total of 7,500 phone-booths-of-the-future by 2024. The kiosks are intended to replace the existing, now-outdated phone booth infrastructure. The project involves lining the the city with hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable. When fully operational, in addition to Internet, the stalls will offer free phone calls, USB charging, and a tablet for web browsing. Those who want to hop on the WiFi from their smartphones have access to an encrypted network, which will keep personal information secure from everyone else accessing the public WiFi.
I have to say that I love the idea of free WiFi across New York City. Being able to stream porn sports and YouTube and anything you’d like to keep cold son on your computer or on your phone without using data is what all cities across the globe should be striving for. But the problem here is that this free WiFi is in New York.
First of all, the free WiFi only works in a 150 foot radius. Do you know how big a 150 foot radius is? I’m not sure, but you will be able to find out by how big the giant circle of poor idiots is that are trying to connect to free WiFi. Sure Time Warner sucks balls, but I would rather be dealing with shitty WiFi in my apartment than rubbing elbows with morons suckling on the wireless internet teet of NYC.
Second is security. Sure you will hear all about how this is a secure connection and blah blah blah. But you cannot convince me that some Mr. Robot motherfucker won’t hack my phone or computer the minute I connect to the WiFi.
Lastly, and most importantly, is how easy it will be for homeless people to get on the Internet while laying in the streets. Sure they could do already that if they somehow ended up with an iPhone. But with free WiFi, all the homeless would need is some shitty old iPod touch that you could probably buy after recycling a few cans and then you have bums just beating their dicks in the middle of the street. I guess they could already do that if they had a porno mag, but that is an option with a very clear ceiling. Homeless people getting into all of the weird shit the Internet has to offer is a nightmare. Do you think they look up homeless porn? Is there such thing as homeless porn? These are questions I do not or want to know the answer to. But if these public WiFi hubs go up, we may end up finding out the answer sooner rather than later.