Scott mentioned the ridiculously long lines for different exhibits at the World Expo. I wonder how often people from different nations used part of that time to get to know each other. It'd be interesting to know if and how language barriers were transversed.
The reason I bring this idea up is that from my own experience it was often difficult to reach out and talk with strangers, let alone people from different countries. As a teenager, I attended World Youth Day in France in 1997 and Rome in 2000. [World Youth Day is a week long global pilgrimage of Catholic Youth that culminates with an evening with the pope.] Something I regret is not taking the time to talk to people from other countries. The opportunity was ample. There were usually herds of people walking from one gathering to the next. In particular, Rome was often at a standstill and it took several hours to reach each destination. I distinctly remembering being next to a group of Japanese pilgrims for two hours and not speaking a word to them.
At the time I blamed my shyness on language barriers, but it was most likely my immaturity as a teenager that kept me and the other American pilgrims I traveled with from iniating conversation with others. We didn't have a problem with other English speaking pilgrims from the UK and Canada. Perhaps, we were also a bit arrogant.
Regardless, I imagine mobile technology addressing these issues in the future. As Jorge posted, there are ways we could use mobile tech to help people a) kill the wait time in lines and b) communicate with each other through a common medium. Perhaps, it could be a game. Some sort of digital treasure hunt?
Interesting to think about. I wonder if Disney would jump on something like that to combat that wait time for the re-modleled Space Mountain.
