This is a large, say two story tall model of the Earth complete with painted continents, oceans, country outlines etc.

It's encircled by multiple walkways so that any one part of this model of the planet can be seen up close. Want to see Alaska? Walk up the stairs to the top walkway. Australia? That's down there and to your right.

Embedded in several dozen locations around the structure are two way video screens. These video screens are connected to video screens in the country corresponding to their location on the big globe structure.

So if you walk to London, you can see people actually in London in real time and talk to them. You can then stroll over to France and say hello to the people at a bar or nightclub over there. Translators take care of the language barrier so you don't need to speak the local language of the country you're "visiting".

Do you dare to go to the middle east? It's about ten feet that way. "Hmm. These people in Bahrain seem pretty nice. Over to India, China, up to Russia, stop at a couple of islands in the Pacific on your way to Australia, you get the idea.

To pay for this, it could be a bar so you can buy cocktails and drink while you meet people from all over the world who are drinking at the other bars where the teleconferencing screens are located.

Around the world in 60 minutes or so.
-- doctorremulac3, May 24 2018

Now you're thinking with Portals... https://www.straits...rs-around-the-world
...the cake is still a lie. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 26 2018]

Antipodean Webcams more prior art [notexactly, May 27 2018]

Many major cities in technologically advanced nations have some sort of science/discovery centre.

This could be a "common feature" in all those locations. The sphere would be rotated so that the host city would be at the 0,0 datum in each location.

The time differences would need to be accounted for; the best method would be to abolish all time zones and make everyone, everywhere use UTC.

Some sort of selective multiplexing would be needed.
-- 8th of 7, May 25 2018


Scale would be an issue. How many people?. 1-4, intimate, might not be cost effective. Might be good for a superstar where the atmospheric crowd presence is the thing rather than the act itself, with the added attraction of being a globally connected supercrowd having a moment in time.
-- wjt, May 25 2018


Bars plus climbing steps around globe structures might be a little risky...
-- RayfordSteele, May 25 2018


Hmm. Good point.

But would anybody want to do this sober? Maybe.

Could be something they'd build at Disneyland maybe. "Talk To People Of The World"?

Of course you'd need to try to make sure the people at the other end were being nice.
-- doctorremulac3, May 25 2018


The entire structure is suspended over a safety net or trampoline. Drunks fall into it. Rude people are pushed into it by a giant, moderating boxing glove. If the globe is indoors (as it might as well be, if it's going to be suspended over a safety net), then artificial lighting will change to illuminate that part of the globe having day at the time.

To keep them open 24 hours, locate them in international airports, and use the interior space to house a well-soundproofed capsule hotel.
-- pertinax, May 25 2018


Yay to all of those ideas.
-- doctorremulac3, May 26 2018


You could also refashion it as some kind of international virtual obstacle course race, like the Ninja Warrior races somehow.
-- RayfordSteele, May 26 2018


Aha! I couldn't remember the name of the exhibit and it took a couple of days to think of the words this contraption wanted input to find it.
The trick was narrowing the search by typing Art Exhibit in quotations.

Prior art, [link].
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 26 2018


This will need to be a very big globe. Libya (680,000 square miles) for example is bigger than France, Germany, Spain, Holland, and Belgium combined.....and that’s just one country. Look at the size of Brazil or Australia, or China. The world is a big place.....
-- xenzag, May 26 2018


... but thanks to rapacious capitalism*, its resources - energy, food, medicine, minerals and media - are now concentrated in the grip of a tiny number of oligarchs and sinister mega-corporations.

<re-adjusts Brane Ray on [xen] to raise blood temperature to boiling point despite elevated blood pressure>

*Including China, which is now Communist in the same way that the U.S.A. is a democracy.
-- 8th of 7, May 26 2018


That ray simply refects off my individually coated tin foil hair strands. Laughs at the idea of being 'attacked' by something I normally see splattered into a stain on my car’s windscreen.
-- xenzag, May 26 2018



random, halfbakery