Off The Record

After Serving 44 Years In Jail, A Man Responds Upon Seeing Times Square And Iphones In The Modern Day

Published on January 26, 2025

This man was rudely awakened when he first went around Times Square after having spent a significant amount of his life in prison.

Otis Johnson appeared to realize how much he had missed out on during his 44 years in prison as he watched the stunning performances.

Unaware of Apple’s rise to prominence in the tech industry, he wondered if the people carrying smartphones were hidden CIA operatives because of the headphones hanging around their necks.

However, it’s not surprising given that Johnson was imprisoned in 1970 and thus escaped the digital revolution entirely, isn’t it?

For better or worse, he is a man who most likely has never heard of somebody like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs.

Johnson was 69 years old when he was released from prison after being imprisoned at the age of 25 for the attempted murder of a police officer in New York in May 1970.

The former martial arts instructor previously told Dazed, “Why would a man shoot at a police officer and then stand on the corner talking to people with the same clothes on?” He never admitted to the crime and insisted he was innocent.

Johnson said he was given an ID, records pertaining to his criminal case history, two bus tickets, and $40 (£32.04) when he was released from prison in 2014.

“Prison affected me a lot,” he said to Al Jazeera a year after being released from prison. “My re-entry was a little bit hard at first, because things have changed.”

You can reiterate that as Johnson was a few decades away from the creation of the iPhone and the first cell phone had not yet been created when he was initially imprisoned.

You can thus pardon him for feeling a little surprised by the bright billboards that were strewn all over Times Square and for thinking that those who were riveted to their devices may be government operatives.

Johnson, who was first taking in the amazing sights at the tech-heavy tourist destination, said of the ads: “On the windows?! This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen! Look! On the windows?“

He smiled and said, “We ain’t seen nothing on no windows but people walking by, not no video,” before discussing his observations of the pedestrians that crossed the street.

“I was looking at the atmosphere, the new things that was happening and I seen that the majority of people were talking to themselves,” he said.

“Then I looked closely and they seemed to have things in there ears. I don’t know with those things, the phone things… iPhones, they call them or something like that?”

“I thought, ‘What, everybody became CIA or agents and stuff like that?’ Because that’s the only thing I can think of if somebody walking around with wires in the ears. That’s what they had when I was out during the 60s and the 70s.”

The ability to “walk and talk on their phone without even looking where they’re going” is another thing that Johnson claimed perplexed him.

“That was amazing to me,” he added, before saying of the street performers which stalk Times Square: “I stand out here for a long time watching this crazy stuff.”

But while Johnson was inside, the cost of making a call on a pay phone had increased by 75 percent, so it wasn’t just the technological developments that had altered.

“I remember this when I first got out,” he smiled. “I was gonna make a call – then I seen the 1$ thing. It was what, 25 cents when I was out?”

Additionally, Johnson was surprised to see how much more there was in the US grocery aisles than there had been in the late 1960s.

“I eat different things now because I’m looking at all this crazy stuff they got,” he stated. “The humorous feasts and variously colored drinks.

“There’s so many things that you can eat, so it’s a hard choice to pick out the food that you want. For instance, the peanut butter—it had jelly in it?”

“And I ain’t never seen anything like that before; it definitely wasn’t in the prison system. Peanut butter and jelly in the same place, in a jar? That was strange.”

He was ecstatic to see that Skippy’s peanut butter, a condiment he had cherished since he was a child, was still available in stores.

Even though Johnson was devastated by the loss of some of his favorite treats, he was nonetheless overjoyed to be free.

“Being in society is a good feeling—a very good feeling. Being inside the prison, you only can go outside at certain times. So I like being in the sun and also observing people. It’s nice. It’s nice to be free.”

Hearing Johnson’s point of view may definitely cause you to reconsider how much time you spend in front of the computer.