Personal Touch Points

Herkimer, NY
43 01.02 N 074 59.84 W


Our anchorage last night was right beside the Herkimer exit of the New York Thruway (I90).  We are only 100 feet from the eastbound lane.  All and night we hear the zooming vehicles go by.  


It made me pause to think, "How many times have we driven past that exact spot in our cars?"  Many times; too many to count.   "How many times have our friends and family driven past that exact spot in their cars?"  Wow, that's a big number.  In fact, just about everyone we have ever known, alive and dead has passed by that exact spot.  I'll bet that many people we knew in Sweden have passed this way sometime.  I'll also bet that most of the people we've met in our cruising life have passed this way sometime in their lives.


Suppose we could invent a gadget to detect people passing by that spot and give us an alarm.  The facial recognition technology needed to do that is just about here.   If we had such a sensor at this spot for the past 55 years that the Thruway has been here, how many times would it have gone off?  It must be a very large number; I estimate 3 per day or more than 55,000 events in 55 years.  Holy Mackerel, that's a lot.


Those numbers should make this place hold enormous sentimental value for us; right?  Alas, our alarm would not aid much in social interaction.  The people whiz by without stopping.  That makes this a great personal touch point, but very little social interaction; hence a nonsocial touch point.


What about other such personal touch points?


Years ago when I traveled at lot, I liked to comment that if I stood at the entrance to Concourse K at O'Hare Airport that I would meet everyone I ever knew.   That was a good personal touch point with much better chances for socializing than sitting beside the Thruway.


In terms of East Coast Cruisers, there are several personal touch points.   Solomons Island Maryland, Oriental North Carolina, Vero Beach Florida, and Marathon Florida, all stand out.   Almost every cruiser has been to those places at least once.  At those spots socializing is maximized, which makes them very popular.


What are your personal touch points?  Think about it.


Let me make a prediction.  Since facial recognition and video surveillance is becoming so ubiquitous, the day will come when a hot dot com business idea will be to aid people in finding their own personal touch points and to send notifications to the computer in their pockets when a contact is activated.  In fact, I'll predict that this invention is only a few years away.  I'll further predict that the first and foremost customer of personaltouchpoint.com will be the FBI.   Come back and comment on my blog five years from now and let me know if I was right or wrong.  


(p.s. I just invested $10 to register personaltouchpoint.com as a domain name.)