I'll tell you who's necessary!

Drat, apparently somebody has figured out my dastardly plan to engage existentialists in a provocative conversation about digital signage via roadside electronic billboards. As fellow blogger Eric at Backward Five notes,

On the way home today, I had to shake my head and think for a couple of seconds after seeing a display flashing me this message:

BECOME NECESSARY.

SEE BILL.

Of course, “become necessary” was the end of a longer sentence. But for a moment, I wondered if I was having a real-life LA Story experience.

“Am I not necessary already? And if not, who on earth is Bill and how’s he going to help?”

I’ve paid some attention to the new digital displays, because they’re hard to ignore, but I haven’t thought about the larger digital signage issues, like readability and safety. Thanks to Bill, I’ll start paying more attention.

Well Eric, I'm glad the message sunk in! I was a little worried that it would be too hard to communicate the benefits and drawbacks of digital signage to casual passers-by via short, cryptic messages on digital billboards, but clearly I was wrong. Since that worked so well, in fact, I've decided to move on to phase two of my plan and use skywriting to extol the virtues of self-service kiosks.

Tags: digital signage, electronic billboards