say goodbye, cavemen

So, Boston’s gone crazy because Outsiders harnessed the fire from the sky to make graven images. Here’s the part that really gets me:

The first device was found under Interstate 93, and the state police bomb squad was called and detonated the package in Sullivan Square just before 10 a.m. Officials said it contained an electronic circuit board with some components that were “consistent with an improvised explosive device,” but they said it had no explosives.

Consistent with an IED. Right. So, assuming that these Cartoon Network signs weren’t any more complex than they had to be, what components made them IED-equivalents?

• power source (battery)
• light source (LEDs)
• wires
• timer/controller (cheap IC or microcontroller)
• maybe a light sensor (photodiode or photoresistor)
• not explosives

I have two qualifying devices on my person right now. Drop the photodiode requirement and I’ve got another three in my backpack. I count twelve in my line of sight.

I get that it’s sort of fun to follow federal protocols and act all serious. But c’mon — the number of mysterious electronic devices that come into our day to day lives is not going to suddenly begin declining. These signs were in several other towns for weeks without the cops freaking out and shutting down the city. Bostonians are just going to need to learn to deal with this kind of stuff. And I really don’t like that CNN has inexplicably dragged my beloved MAKE Magazine into this mess.

I don’t mean to voice support for the ad campaign, of course, despite my affection for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Guerilla marketers like Interference Inc. (who appear to be behind this scheme) are scumbags and thieves, helping themselves to our public spaces and ripping off other people’s art. But I’m even less fond of the humorless morons who shut down Boston and seem likely to drag Williams Street into court.

Other than that, the whole thing’s pretty funny. And I’m looking forward to hearing more about this from two outlets in particular: Bruce Schneier, and Adult Swim’s black & white bumps.

UPDATE: It’s worse than I thought! From CNN:

“It had a very sinister appearance,” Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.”

Holy shit! I think I’ve got some sort of chronometric doomsday device looming over me right now!

UPDATE 2: Check out alpha-geek Bunnie Huang’s response to the incident.

UPDATE 3: MAKE has close-up shots of one of the signs. There’s a few AA batteries, a voltage regulator, a small microcontroller, an inductor, what I think is an LED driver, a photoresistor, and a bunch of diodes, capacitors, resistors and LEDs. You could comfortably hold all of these components in your cupped palm. None of them costs much more than a dollar, and most are only a few cents. And, based on my admittedly amateur knowledge of electronics, none could destroy a major American city.

UPDATE 4: Justin sent along this analysis of the campaign from a marketing perspective. The bizsolutions blogger thinks that making the campaign higher profile (by involving alternative media, among other things), these problems could have been avoided. I agree that putting a phone number on the signs for law enforcement (not the public) to call could have saved everyone a lot of trouble, but otherwise I disagree with this analysis. The whole point of the campaign is to evoke the subversive work of people like Shepard Fairey and Graffiti Research Labs. Thinking of this as just another illuminated billboard totally misunderstands the Adult Swim brand and how it has been presented up to this point. AS viewers like the idea that they’re in on a secret. The ideal outcome for this campaign was to get people talking and a bunch of threads started on message boards. Issuing directions, treating the campaign like a scavenger hunt and interviewing sign-finders on the HOT! 99.n Morning Show runs completely contrary to that idea. Cartoon Network’s huge success is in part due to a huge amount of respect for its audience. It doesn’t strike me as the sort of relationship that’s compatible with traditional marketing techniques.

The photos of Williams Street belong to Catherine, who I assume won’t sue me for using them. They’re of the tour of Adult Swim HQ that we were lucky enough to be given back in July.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 9:25 pm and is filed under pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.