Telephone Booth, Helen Levitt, 1982.

Telephone booths, those pre-mobile totems to obsolesence, are being repurposed in NYC. From Ryan Kim at Gigaom:

“Payphones, those relics of the pre-cellphone era, may just get a new lease on life in New York. The city is testing a pilot program in which it installs free Wi-Fi on select payphone kiosks.

The hotspots are initially coming to ten payphones in three of the boroughs and will be open to the public to access for free. Users just agree to the terms, visit the city’s tourism website and then they’re up and running. Currently, there are no ads on the service, but there could be in the future.”