I am a fuddy-duddy.  This is obvious for many many reasons, but also is demonstrated by the fact that (1) I went to play string quartets tonight and (2) I was twenty minutes early.  I have been walking around the block to avoid being too early since I was six years old.

But being early sometimes has its advantages.  Tonight, I spent my twenty minutes with the Lehman Brothers building at 50th and 7th.

This is a building of flat TV screen displays.  Sometimes ghostly images of employees (there's a loop) walk across the front of the building, but most of the loop is nature scenes with LEHMAN BROTHERS written across them, moving constantly.

Or bridges.  Or mountains.  (These images are from www.lightningfield.com.)

I'm going to take a stand here that demonstrates once again some intrinsic fuddy-duddiness:  I want buildings to be buildings.  This building was trying to give me a rich media, quasi-online experience.  It didn't allow me to imagine life inside the building -- instead, it screamed its brand in constantly moving images that grabbed my attention.  Granted, the building also told me the time -- there's a huge time readout area on the top panels -- and I like that in a building.  But otherwise I have no impression of the building, just a memory of lights so bright that they lit up the entire block.  (My host later told me that Times Square has a "minimum signage" rule to keep things bright and kinetic.)

I like buildings that don't pretend to be web sites.  I don't mind web sites that pretend to be buildings.  I'm a big fan of fully-immersive virtual worlds.  But you know what you're getting and you've chosen to go there.  You're not spending twenty minutes with a blinking building, wondering when the loop is going to start again. 

We ended up playing one of the big Brahms sextets (there are only two, and if you are a real fuddy-duddy you already know what keys they are in), and that was satisfying.  And I still use email.  People under 30 apparently don't do that any more.