Nyíregyháza, 1964. The waiting room of the train station at Nyíregyháza, a small city in north-east Hungary (about the size of Ōtepoti in Aotearoa) . A love this photo, and can only guess at the many stories of those waiting, especially the woman with her hand on her face the middle foreground.
You know what we’ve never had in the arc of history from the Dot Com Boom and Pets dot com, to the mobile web and “there’s an app for that”, to Web 3.0 and crypto and the metaverse and AI chatbots telling you everything?
We’ve never had a “waiting room” app or website. It could sign up doctors’ surgeries and dentists and hospitals, and over the last 25 years it would’ve informed you of the BARE MINIMUM of information “you have X mins remaining / are required to return to the waiting room / have progressed to X in the queue”
In 1998 that would have been via dial-in automated voice. In 2003 it would have sent you an SMS. In 2008 it would have been with an app on your smartphone. In 2013 it would have been with a really good app — giving walking directions, ETA on demand, and notifying each other of location. In 2018 it would have been with an optional watch app so you don’t miss your appointment and can work in an office while “waiting for a doctor”. #waiting#waitingroom#waitingpatiently