Vestiges of Our Analog Past | Michael Patrick Brady

Vestiges

Digital Train Information Board, South Station

This weekend at South Station, I noticed something about the new digital train information board. When they change the information being displayed, it makes the familiar “chk-chk-chk-chk” sound of the old analog flip boards. There’s a speaker mounted on the bottom of the board. It seems ridiculous at first, but I really can’t think of a better way to make people aware that the board is changing that doesn’t involve lots of painstaking reconditioning. Our future technology is in many ways constrained by tradition.

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