Close your eyes and take a journey with me back to the year 2020. The world was ending, Tiger King was on Netflix, and workplaces were experimenting with the “Zoom happy hour.”
A Zoom happy hour, for those who don’t know, is a Covid-era innovation which stipulates that one sips an alcoholic beverage while looking at ones coworkers on a computer screen and smiling, usually until someone announces that they “need to drop.”
For a few months it was thought to be the next best thing given that a real happy hour was unthinkable due to Covid-19 and the swift death it would surely bring about.
But after a few minutes of a Zoom happy hour, one wonders whether a swift death would really be such a bad thing after all.
For years I thought that the Zoom happy hour was the dumbest possible use of video technology, but then I learned about the NYC Portal.
The portal stands in the Flatiron neighborhood of New York City and is essentially a large, circular Zoom to Dublin, Ireland. New Yorkers gather to look at Irish people on the screen, who in turn are looking back at the New Yorkers on their own portal screen. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be an animal in the zoo, you might consider standing in front of the portal.
“This project exemplifies the fusion of technology and engineering to bring communities from across the world closer together,” declared the Lord Mayor of Dublin, which is a real title and not a joke.
“Two amazing global cities, connected in real time and space. That is something you do not see every day!” responded Ya-Ting Liu, NYC’s Chief Public Realm Officer (also a real title).
The portal was temporarily disabled in May after people on the Dublin side displayed swastikas and images of the September 11th terrorist attacks (those rascals!) and, in response, “an OnlyFans model exposed her breasts to those in Dublin.”
It appears that the portal certainly has connected the two cities, just maybe not in the way the Lord Mayor and the Chief Public Realm Officer had imagined.
The portal is a rare example of technology finally being used for something positive, like transcending borders and physical distance to tease each other about terrorist attacks and flashing breasts, and that’s how we bring the world a little closer together.