Say what you want about technology, but it will give you many opportunities to not waste your time. For better or worse, if you have a smartphone or mobile device it will be possible to access multiple sources designed to make better use of your time. The latest application designed to do just that is The Underground Library by Max Pilwat, Keri Tan and Ferdi Rodriguez, three students at the Miami Ad School. Their proposal might just be one of the best ways to spend your time while commuting on a subway. Using a device enabled with near field communications, or NFC, you can swipe an ad by the New York Public Library and get the first 10 pages of the book on your device.

The goal for the three students was to do something about the empty libraries in their city by enticing commuters to visit their local library. The solution is ingenious, beautiful and truly inspired.

So let us suppose you are on one of New York’s subway and you see one of the New York Public Library ads with some of the latest best sellers or maybe even some of the classics. Here is what you do to get the first 10 pages on your device:

• First – swipe the ad to access the catalog of books available with your NFC enabled device
• Second –choose the book and the first 10 pages get uploaded and you start reading
• Third – when you finishing reading, the application finds the nearest public library close to your location that has the book available with a map on how to get there
• Four – you go to the library, checkout the book for free and finish the book

This application will always work even in tunnels that are not wired because all the information is contained in the library advertising. NFC is a wireless communication system that doesn’t require contact. It uses a radio-frequency magnetic field to transfer information when a device is held in close proximity to the NFC tag (News - Alert).

The adaptation of NFCs for this type of application is not going to escape advertisers and in the near future every indoor or outdoor ad within reach of a pedestrian will have these devices installed in them.

This application is just a proposal and so far it has not been adopted by anyone.