LinkNYC

It was just a mess.

Now there are LinkNYC kiosks, which, you know, are much better, you know? Free phone calls, free Wi-Fi, and there are going to be LinkNYC 5G spaces coming very soon, this summer, actually.

There are still a couple pay phones left in the city.

They're like the old Superman-type phone boxes, but they don't actually work for phone calls anymore.

Ultimately, strategy and design need to be tools for meaning to be discovered rather than imposed.

What happens when maps are built from the top down? What happens when the master plan doesn't quite meet reality? So our colleague, Robert, told us the story about the launch of LinkNYC that he was involved in.

And from the outset, the plan was clear.

It was to provide free Wi-Fi.

[laughs]

You know? He put me on the, the franchise concession review court where I got to basically force the city to renegotiate and restructure the franchise agreement that became LinkNYC, the Wi-Fi kiosks.

Wow.

So that it was more equitable, and they were working the outer boroughs earlier in the pr-

We have the access problem in New York City as well, still, between people who have access to the internet and people who don't have access to the internet.

People who rely on LinkNYC kiosks to have access to the internet and do their homework in many places is a real thing.

Can I just ask you, what could the policies in South Korea unintentionally result in?

Well, I think that could potentially result in a lot of things.