New York City just got rid of its last payphone
It's going to a museum and being replaced by a wifi kiosk
It’s the end of an era: New York City removed its last remaining public payphone on Monday, near Seventh Ave. and 50th St. in Manhattan.
The payphone is heading to a museum and being replaced by a LinkNYC kiosk which offers free public wifi, phone calls, and device charging.
Analog City: NYC B.C. (Before Computers) opened last Friday at the Museum of the City of New York and runs through the end of the year. The exhibition shows how the New York Times, New York Stock Exchange, and New York Public Library operated before computers, and focuses on the time period between the 1870s and 1970s.
The payphone will join artifacts like a typewriter and rotary dial phone. You laugh, but one day your smartphone is going to be in a museum, mortal.
“Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile and from the automobile to the airplane, the digital evolution has progressed from payphones to high-speed wifi kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communications needs,” New York City chief technology officer Matthew Fraser said in a statement.
Artist KAWS, who vandalized New York payphones and billboards with his art in the 1990s, paid tribute to public payphones on Monday with throwback photos. RIP.
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