The Future is Now

With digital billboards, police can now display a suspect's face to thousands of people, sometimes almost immediately after a crime is reported.

"We can be up in 15 minutes" of getting a suspect's photo, said Troy Tatum, general manager of Lamar Advertising, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based company that provided free use of the billboards in Mobile as a public service.

Back in August, I commented on the how rapidly science fiction becomes reality these days. In that post, I cited the movie Minority Report as being particularly prescient with regard to some aspects of our future.

This recent article from on the successful use of digital billboards as wanted posters is just one more illustration of how rapidly such "futuristic" concepts from recent films have become reality.