Friday, July 27, 2007

Taxi TV

Once upon a time, in the 1970s, there was a TV show called "Taxi", about a bunch of cab drivers in NYC. Today, in 2007, there are TVs in taxis. At least, there are here in NYC.

Recently my beloved and I caught a cab, and upon settling in we were confronted with a TV screen snuggled into the back seat partition. It's not really a TV screen but a touch screen, one that includes an electronic fare meter and a GPS-like tracking thing (so you can see the streets you traveling on). The screen also includes several buttons where you can get weather updates as well as local and national news (in this case, the cab was "sponsored" by NBC so it was all Peacock network programming). We didn't have enough time to check out all its funky features but it was a cute if somewhat annoying new technology.

There's been some controversy about these in-cab TVs. Some people hate being forced to look at flickering images during their ride (although there is a button to turn it off). The cab drivers hate the GPS technology since they don't like being able to be tracked. I can understand why some people would love it and why others would loathe it. I say, if you like, have fun. And if you don't, just ignore it. After all, this is New York City, and if you can't stand putting up with new annoying things, well ... it's time to think about moving to the South.

1 comment:

  1. Ha ha! I got your email and linked to you, btw. :)

    ReplyDelete

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