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It's time to build: a New World's Fair
- kaycebasques 6y agoThe post starts to share a vision for a new fair. Are they proposing that the new fair should actually contain all those elements? Or is it just an example? How were the visions in the previous (successful) fairs agreed upon? Did space go to the highest bidders? Furthermore, was the space divvied up so that NASA had a section (for example) and Ford had their own space? Or was it all intermingled?
- camwiese 6y agoGreat question. We're planning to compile the most compelling vision of the future that we can. We'll shape the content to suit the technologies available, but also need to ensure we paint a picture of where we can go. Most Fairs struggle with this because the organizing body has no control over the content of most of the Pavilions. By privately organizing and operating it, the new World's Fair will function more like Epcot where we craft the experience pulling in corporations, countries, and ngo's as we see fit. Lastly, the Fairgrounds are generally split up into themes with each of the companies/countries hosting their own Pavilion. The map from the 1964 New York World's Fair is a pretty good example of this: http://www.nywf64.com/maps01.shtml http://www.nywf64.com/maps01.shtml
- git_configured 6y agoWas very surprised to not see any mention of Expo2020, which has been hailed as a "World's Fair for the 21st Century". UAE and Dubai put tons of resources and capital into it but obviously had to deal with the issue of in person events in 2020. As I understand it has been rescheduled for the end of 2021... https://expo2020dubai.ae/en/ https://expo2020dubai.ae/en/
- camwiese 6y agoExpo 2020 is shaping up to be an incredible project, however I'm still expecting it to fall victim to the same challenge that all Fairs since 1970 have had: a lack of a unifying vision. Since every country presents their own narrative, it's hard to guarantee alignment. I'm heading out there next month and will hopefully find something inspiring to help shape our efforts.
- whatshisface 6y agoI'm not sure how you could have a unifying vision for something as broad and diverse as "the future," or "the good parts of the future," without projecting it down into a simplistic, synthesized work of very fictional storytelling where all resemblance to reality (and consequently all authority) has been sacrificed in favor of comprehensibility and persuasiveness. In other words, the clearest route to getting people excited about a World Fair involves sacrificing the reason you'd want people excited about a World Fair.
- camwiese 6y agoTo clarify. There's no unifying vision because most of the Pavilions are developed by large government committees where everyone wants to show off a little bit of everything. As a result, their Pavilions end up being a watered down version of their vision for the future.
- whatshisface 6y agoFor better or worse, the future itself is to a large extent developed by large government committees - or at least the funding allocation for the cutting-edge research projects that show up at World Fairs are.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoHave you ever seen the photos from Expo 1937 in Paris? Or read about it? The organizers put the USSR and Nazi Germany directly across from each other... talk about "unifying vision" ... https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/09/21/when-paris-invited-both-the-nazis-and-the-soviets-to-its-1937-world-expo/ https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/09/21/when-paris-invited...
- souprock 6y agomissed a chance to place Poland in the middle
- caslon 6y agoI really don't think Expo2020 counts. Rooting the future in the UAE seems like a losing battle, and it seems like the amount of entities that would choose not to participate would outweigh those that would.
- mpalmer 6y agoIs there a place on Earth where that wouldn't be the case?
- lambda_obrien 6y agoThe internet? Make it a virtual event, so everyone can attend.
- camwiese 6y agoWe fundamentally believe in the prosperity of our physical world. The fair itself will be physical, but will have a virtual component so that anyone with a smart phone or, even better, a VR headset, can participate.
- w-j-w 6y agoGiven the inventions the author wanted to showcase, the United States seems like the obvious place. While US global dominance has been challenged, it is still very much home to a lot of innovation. My biggest fear is that the fair could wind up being killed by a political squabble about globalism.
- alexchamberlain 6y agoSwitzerland? The Nordic countries? Even the UK hasn't annoyed most countries to the point we wouldn't welcome guests for something like this. It's basically the equivalent of the Olympics of the business and science world; of you are granted the honour of hosting, you go out of your way to extend an olive branch.
- Rule35 6y ago
- adfm 6y agoBeyond Expo2020, you can find information on the upcoming Expo2025 in Osaka on the Bureau International des Expositions website[1]. [1]: https://www.bie-paris.org/ https://www.bie-paris.org/
- mortenjorck 6y ago> Today, World's Fairs have been rebranded as "International Expositions" that occur every 5 years, and are a hollow shell of their former glory. They no longer showcase the promise of the future or celebrate achievement. Instead, they serve as national branding exercises, infrastructure development projects masquerading as innovation, architecture competitions, and an opportunity to promote tourism. I don't know enough about Expo2020 to agree or disagree, but I assumed the author's assessment above was in reference to the series of which the Dubai exhibition is a part.
- minikites 6y agoWe as a species gave up trying to solve difficult problems and now we're only concerned with inflating asset prices to feel "wealthy". Smart engineers are working for HFT firms instead of NASA. We've equated "wealth" with "progress" and we're now discovering how hollow all these fake numbers are.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago> We as a species gave up trying to solve difficult problems We live in an era of constant fascinating biological and cosmological discoveries. In the past 3 years we have entered the era of gene therapy healthcare with several genetic treatments recieving approval by he FDA. We are on the cusp of break even if not effective fusion energy. I cannot deny that the financialization of everything has diminished the moral imperative of some of these efforts but to act as if no one is attacking big problems is silly.
- minikites 6y agoThe fact that every nightly news program includes a report on the stock market (which they invariably conflate with "the economy") but not any of the things you mention is kind of my point. We used to glorify that work. Now the best we can hope for is that it gets ignored lest some senator notice and cut their funding to "eliminate government waste".
- camwiese 6y agoOne of the largest problems is due to the negative media cycle and focus on things that drive engagement. Hopefully by stepping out of this algorithmically generated world, we can get experiencing the future and imagining their role in it.
- DubiousPusher 6y agoI agree. This work is being done in a spirit of pure profit seeking. Even when the individual contributors have altruistic intentions they cannot help that they are part of a larger system which seeks to extract profit from their work. And I also agree that a world's fair would only succeed in highlighting our willingness to pour money into profitable benefit while turning a eye from the growing need in our society. I really wish we could recenter our society on collective benefit with the financial aspect considered as one of many values involved.
- reaperducer 6y agoNaysayers always complain that these fairs cost too much money and are entirely fluff events. History shows that's not true. For example, over a hundred years later, Chicago is still making money from the economic, social, and infrastructure benefits of its fairs.
- whatshisface 6y ago>over a hundred years later, Chicago is still making money from the economic, social, and infrastructure benefits of its fairs. Because of the way the economy works, this can be said of absolutely any expenditure anywhere anytime for any reason. If even one project laborer buys a cup of coffee on the job, at least $4 of value then gets sent out into circulation in a way that has been plausibly colored by the construction of the Big Money Pit of 1849.
- mynameisvlad 6y agoAnd stimulating local economies is a problem... why?
- whatshisface 6y agoAll expenditures stimulate the economy equally, as measured by the "marked bills" theory. That means the only way to compare them is to evaluate opportunity costs. Spending a million bucks on constructing a big hole in the middle of nowhere, and performing an important infrastructure revitalization, will both put dollars in the hands of laborers, and thereby grocery stores and so on, at the same rate. That's why all of the useful parts of the discussion are on the specific, immediate consequences; the distant consequences are the same no matter what you do.
- iso1631 6y ago> the distant consequences are the same no matter what you do. Three things 1) Spend the money on blackjack and hookers 2) Spend the money on a new bridge 3) Burn the money on a bonfire for giggles Those three have very different "distant consequences"
- reactspa 6y agoYouTube is the world's fair.
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- u678u 6y agoI'm pretty sure they are still going, though less frequently. After 2020 Dubai, 23 is in Argentina and 25 will be in Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair
- camwiese 6y agoAs stated in the essay, they now operate as "International Exhibitions", not "World's Fairs." There's some nuance to this, but the problem is still the same. These events are national branding exercises & architecture competitions, not a place where the future becomes real.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mattowen_uk 6y agoHere in the UK (and Commonwealth) we had The Great Exhibition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition
- lswainemoore 6y agoNitpicky/unsolicited UI feedback: I do a lot of double/triple clicking to highlight text as I read online (fidgeting, but also helps keep track of where I am). On your site, triple clicking unintentionally hits the twitter share button, which opens a new, unwanted window. Bit annoying. Medium does something similar, but they offset the button so you have to move cursor in between clicks to actually trigger the button.
- camwiese 6y agoThank you — I pieced that feature together. Will tweak!
- jackson1442 6y agoMight I suggest having a spot in the margin devoted to that button, placed either halfway down the paragraph or (if you have a really really long P or selection) halfway down the screen?
- ksm1717 6y agoI’m fascinated by that phenomenon. I don’t even notice I’m doing it most of the time, and I’m shocked by how many other people do it. Specific, common, digital tics. Another one is control-s after a single line changed. Something immensely satisfying about selecting that perfect block of text and making that “altered document” asterisk go away.
- tonyarkles 6y agoFor me it’s partly a habit from writing code. Most of the time I’m only modifying a few lines at a time and am going to do another test cycle. Gotta save to make that happen! (Excluding, of course, the editors that auto save all the time and cover your screen with red lines when you’ve tipped half a statement and then stop to think about it for a few seconds...)
- ghostpepper 6y agoThere are a handful of sites I've encountered that do this and I hate it. Feels like a violation when I can't select text the way I normally do, for some reason.
- ipsum2 6y agoNo mention of Expo 2010, which had representation from 65 different countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_2010_pavilions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_2010_pavilions. I didn't go, but the photos of the architecture from the different countries were beautiful. > After the six-month run, the Expo had attracted well over 70 million visitors. The Expo 2010 is also the most expensive fair in the history of World's Fair, with more than 45 billion US dollars invested from the Chinese Government
- canadianfella 6y agoWas beautiful
- klenwell 6y ago> I didn't go, but the photos of the architecture from the different countries were beautiful. Apparently, the American pavilion was not among them: Now that the US Pavilion has been open for several days, its reviews, to be generous, are mixed. Visitors, after a two-hour wait, enjoy the upbeat attitude of the student “ambassadors” who greet them in Mandarin — but few are impressed by the three films that constitute the US Pavilion’s content. (One reporter noted that the price for the three shorts, about $23 million, is more than the production costs of the Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker.) The “American people’s” sole walk-on are brief vignettes that flicker on the screen and then are gone. Chinese visitors are reported to have remarked, especially after the hype and long wait, “We expected more from America.” Visitors exit the theater into a large hall dedicated to fawning over the 60-odd corporate sponsors whose names and brands are the only aspects of American life and culture to which the pavilion accords recognition. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-epic-failure-of-planni_b_561697 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-epic-failure-of-planni_b_5...
- ipsum2 6y agoDefinitely, check out the photos on the Wikipedia article I linked. USA looks very plain, compared to Thailand, Taiwan, India, France, Portugal, UK etc. USA's architecture looks closer to North Korea than the others.
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- hyko 6y agoDoes nobody remember the Millennium Dome? They had an exhibit called “MoneyZone” which included a tunnel made out of £1 million in crisp fifties. Good times.
- poisonborz 6y agoI admire the optimism and motivational tone of the article, but fairs and expos are a thing of the past. We don't need to build elaborate, carefully constructed single-use cities to showcase the scientific advances of the world. Those showcases happen day by day on the internet and mass media.
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- kratom_sandwich 6y agoI don't think the argument is valid because it can be applied to nearly every event where people come together, including sporting events and concerts. But like with the Olympic Games, the World's Fair can serve as a catalyst for urban development projects. Also, the "science showcase" is a thing of the past, the BIE switched to "individual country showcase" a couple of years ago, which makes the whole thing a lot less appealing IMHO, but that's another issue.
- Fordec 6y agoI find this perplexing because the Olympic Games is notorious for draining an urban centers resources for years and the result being a bunch of infrastructure that the majority of the time just slowly decays due to the local community not having the same volume of population to fully utilize the utility. The handling of the 2016 games was an especially bad case. It's overall a nationalistic country level flex at the expense of the local area. It's part of why only big countries host it, the side affects will only affect one city and you have other places to sustain the nationwide economy despite the hit.
- labster 6y agoSpeak for yourself. Los Angeles ran a profitable Olympics in 1984 and we look forward to doing so again in 2028. And nationalism is at a low ebb here, given our last four years fighting His Nibs on everything. It’s all about competition and entertainment for us. And infrastructure that can be reused for more entertainment.
- dgellow 6y ago> Now, flicking your wearable token with impatient fingers, you feel a slight force as your Hyperloop pod comes to a stop. You lost me at “Hyperloop”. How is that a vision of the future when we know for a fact that the idea doesn’t make practical sense?
- saalweachter 6y agoTo be fair, most "visions of the future" are filled with impractical ideas.
- Scene_Cast2 6y agoThe US already has established air travel. And mass transit via trains is not a technological problem, it is a political and a marketing problem. Hyperloop has the potential to solve the political and marketing problems.
- dgellow 6y agoHyperloop may solve political and marketing problems, but doesn’t solve the “cheap, safe, and fast transport problem” in any ways. That’s a completely impractical concept.
- jcranmer 6y agoHyperloop struggles mightily with the "mass" part of "mass transit." Its theoretical capacity is easily ⅒th of an equivalent rail line, and even then you're making some heroic assumptions about how frequently the "pods" can be safely dispatched.
- bluescrn 6y agoUntil the first 'hypercrash'
- Tiktaalik 6y agoHyperloop itself creates the political and marketing problem. Is a fantasy created by the billionaire owner of a car company that is a distraction from the actual totally viable solution of contemporary high speed rail.
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- CaptArmchair 6y agoI feel the article is, at best, a nostalgic take to a Post-War time between 1945 and 1970. And, at worst, merely an itch to indulge in consuming modern technology. Both takes are missing the mark about what a World Fair is about. Here's why. The 3 decades after 1945 were a time when economies of formerly allied nations were booming. In France, these years äre known as the "Trente Glorieuses". Many more countries had their own "economic miracle" during this time. Even West-Germany and Austria had their own "Wirtschaftwunder" as their economies bounced back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_economic_expansion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_econ... Many parts of the world were still formal colonies to Western nations, or their economies hadn't fully modernized yet to a point where a sizable middle-class has access to democratized /commoditized comforts of a Western lifestyle e.g. aviation, healthcare, education, even sanitation, access to media and so on. Not to mention the spectre of the Cold War that loomed over these decades. Against this historic backdrop, the fair is notable because it was a showcase of mid-20th century American culture and technology. That shouldn't really come as a surprise since it was firmly organized within the sphere of influence of America's hegemony. Such were the times in 1965. And they are incomparable to 2021. The organization of a World Fair in 1965 happened in a vastly different context, with vastly different incentives, interests and motives then it does in 2021. The author misses that completely and marches blindly onward hence: > Today, World's Fairs have been rebranded as "International Expositions" that occur every 5 years, and are a hollow shell of their former glory. They no longer showcase the promise of the future or celebrate achievement. Instead, they serve as national branding exercises, infrastructure development projects masquerading as innovation, architecture competitions, and an opportunity to promote tourism. If anything, they're the perfect representation of our current vision for the future: unfocused and uninspiring. > But it doesn't have to be this way; we can't afford for it to be this way. > The world has changed dramatically since 1984. We now live in the most incredible time in human history. The internet has brought billions of people together and tech companies have given us supercomputers in our pockets. We're starting to build hyperloops and supersonic jets. We're on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs in genetics, biology, medicine, food science, energy, transportation, manufacturing, computing, and robotics. We're finally going back to the moon and then on to Mars. We've once again seen the power of a collective vision with the record-breaking development of the COVID-19 vaccine. The World's Fair is a reflection of the World in 2021 and the future. With the complexity of representing 7.8 billion people, an array of sovereign nations which didn't exist in 1965. It's an event which competes with against the complexity of a exploding plethora of modern mass media, new stakeholders, emerging markets, and so on fueled by globalisation, digitization and automatisation. A Fair isn't just an marketing event, it's a global forum that aims beyond other events that present themselves as global fora or gatherings. It's an opportunity for nations and peoples to present a showcase to the world. It gives them the chance to put a message out. In that regard, the World Fair is akin to that other global event where the world gathers: The Olympics. The organization of the World Fair is no longer rooted in the political or economical global hegemony of a handful of "first-world" (for lack a better term) nations showing off their industrial might and international prowess, such as it was during the latter half of the 20th century. The Fair is now also home to many new nations and upcoming economies or regional powers who are making their entrance to the World's stage, and to whom the importance isn't plain "technological innovation" but above all showing themselves to the world, what they have to offer to the world, what their aspirations are, what they hope for the futre, and taking part in the global forum. In that regard, the vision for World Fair extends far beyond technology per the offical website: https://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/what-is-an-expo https://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/what-is-an-expo For sure, there's going to the Moon or Mars, and there are hyperloops and driverless cars, or there's even developing a COVID vaccine. These are wonderful developments. But are they really the developments that need to be put front and center at World's Fair at the expense of everything else? Are these the only developments that should matter to 7.8 billion people in 2021? The second part from this article seems to voice a want for the World's Fair to limit itself to showcasing technology, engineering and media. To me, it sounds like not much more then a want for being able to indulge in advertising when visiting the Fair. And that comes across as, well, rather tone deaf. A World Fair isn't about merely basking in the marvels of technology or innovation. It's about the humans and humanity that are represented, visit and meet at a Fair.
- harles 6y ago> Unfortunately, this all started to change after the U.S. put a man on the moon. While this was certainly a "giant leap for mankind," we lacked an understanding of what our next step would be. Is there supporting evidence of these assertions? There are some interesting ideas in here, but I’m not seeing anything to back them up.
- koolk3ychain 6y agoYeah no, we should use this money to fund energy research. Trying to woo idiots is a stupid game already won by youtube, online advertising and TikTok.
- Johnny555 6y agoFrom the article: ...wait eagerly for Jessica Watkins to take the first step on Mars There's an unfortunate name collision, I didn't know who Jessica Watkins was so Googled her, and the top results are for a Jessica Watkins who participated in the attack on the USA Capitol... I spent a moment pondering what her link to Mars was.. but farther down the results list is NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins. It's a shame that the astronaut has her search results cluttered by the insurrectionist. Back when I was doing online dating, I shared a name (and similar age and nearby city) with the brother of a recently convicted serial killer, searching for my name brought up articles about him... I warned potential dates that if they looked me up online, I'm not that guy (which, I suppose, is exactly what the brother of a serial killer would say).
- DoctorBonkus 6y agoYes, a bit unfortunant, and I did the same thing. Being a non-american I thought she was a congresswoman as well. But it's such a minor detail and in the end no less, that it shouldn't detere from the main point of the article
- darig 6y agoThe first result for DDG is the oath keepers article too, but they feature the astronaut's wikipedia page covering the full right column, including her picture. I can't compare with Google results because I don't appreciate being spied on.
- fortran77 6y agoThe 1963-64 world's fair shaped my entire life. My earliest clear memories were from that fair, and ever since I've been fascinated by "futurism", technology, computers, space, architecture, etc. Every school and career choice I've made was based on some inspirational spark that hit me there.
- camwiese 6y agoThank you for sharing this. Giving people hope and a belief in the future is what the Fair is all about — especially in the face of extreme pessimism.
- Bearsilber 6y agoThat's so cool. You don't happen to have any photos your family took, do you? I'm a little younger, and Tomorrowland at Disney was that for me.
- neon_me 6y agothought CCC is the worlds fair of the 20's ... :)
- albertTJames 6y agoWorld fairs were possible because labor was cheap and the west was rich.
- colecut 6y agoThis will probably get some flack and I am not a hardcore burner by any means, I went for a few days in 2010... But Burning Man to me seems like a bit of a World's Fair. I met some people who brought a massive insect-inspired art car from Australia..
- Animats 6y agoThe last really prophetic world's fair was New York, 1939. That's famous for GM's vision of the future of 1960, the original "Futurerama" . Freeways everywhere. RCA had television. AT&T let you make free long distance calls. All that stuff happened. The 1964 World's Fair had another GM exhibit. Colonization of the Moon. Underwater cities. None of that happened. What could we have in a World's Fair now that looks ahead? Colonization of Mars? Mars sucks as real estate. There may be research bases there someday, but as a self-sufficient area, it would be tougher than Antarctica or a continental shelf. Robots may some day be a thing, but they still don't work well in unstructured environments.
- musicale 6y agoCertainly it's harder to get to Mars, but is the environment more hostile than on the moon? Mars has something of a CO2 atmosphere, and might have more accessible water. The soil may be more usable as well.
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- mminer237 6y agoIt's not physically more hostile than the moon, but we've never colonized the moon for the same reason. It's really hard to live there for not much benefit. There are plenty of sparsely-inhabited deserts on Earth that are much nicer places to live.
- godelski 6y agoDon't forget that you don't have an electric ground
- nickt 6y agoThat’s why in non-American English it’s called earth. :) I had no idea. Hackaday explains as well as some other things I’d not though about. https://hackaday.com/2017/08/17/living-on-mars-the-stuff-you-never-thought-about/ https://hackaday.com/2017/08/17/living-on-mars-the-stuff-you...
- alex_young 6y agoIt’s not exactly the same, but Burning Man comes pretty close in a lot of ways. If you haven’t been, there are thousands of art projects at a grand scale, things that take up blocks of space a piece, and they are built by artists from around the world, giving everyone a global perspective of what is possible. I also love the idea of showcasing what is possible for a society. There is a true sense of community, immediacy, and collaboration where everyone there is an active participant. There are dozens of smaller events with similar properties, likely one nearby.
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- markdown 6y agoIf you hold it in the US, it could have only American companies represented and still call it the World's Fair. Just like Baseball.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoTalk to the U, Hk, and B people in Asia, ... sorry but “collective vision” is the problem. NASA does not dominate but individual. Collective is evil and commonness is a crime. Let individual be individual. You do not need this for a steve job to thrive. But any joint ignoring individual rights ... it would be 1984 coming today, as it has and coming to a lot of human beings.
- zestyping 6y agoHmm. I fear that a World's Fair would be an extremely attractive venue for quackery and pseudoscience. How would we avoid that?
- xwdv 6y agoWhy is the future always just a catalog of cool shit you might be able to buy one day if they figure out how to make it?
- drivingmenuts 6y agoA World’s Fair now would be like The Olympics, a ridiculously expensive, corruption-laden affair that would cost many countries more than they could ever recoup, benefiting only a few rich 1st-world countries and/or multi-national companies. While the average person would see “marvels”, they’d be the corporate-approved, mass-market-acceptable marvels that were cleared through legal before being shown to the public. You can see more innovation in an afternoon spent on blogs than you would ever see in a 6-month long, static display of corporate bullshit.
- unixhero 6y agoWas Walt Disney's EPCOT vision ever part of the world fair?
- UncleOxidant 6y agoI'm not sure we can ever get back to the techno-optimism that characterized much of America in the past. This article seems to suggest that we as a country can become optimistic about the future again by having a World's Fair. That by doing so we'll recapture a shared vision of the future and a shared cultural purpose that we had until it started to fall apart in the 90s. It's a quaint idea, but it doesn't seem likely to succeed in bridging the widening gaps between various tribes. Much of this cultural disintegration was caused by technology.
- musicale 6y agoI miss the Maker Faire in its heyday, when it was mostly individual inventors and crafters showing cool stuff they had made and how they made them.
- jhu247 6y agoIt's amazing to me that the World's Fair gave us so many iconic and wonderful structures, all of which are probably too impractical to build otherwise: the Eiffel Tower, Space Needle, Unisphere, Palace of Fine Arts, etc. It's unrealistic, but it's worth having a new world's fair just for an excuse to build another one of these!
- devoutsalsa 6y agoI’m imagining a future where you can get idempotently vaccinated w/ legit antibodies for any in person event you attend for near instant immunity to illness.
- Aeolun 6y ago> They no longer showcase the promise of the future or celebrate achievement. Instead, they serve as national branding exercises, infrastructure development projects masquerading as innovation, architecture competitions, and an opportunity to promote tourism I kind of feel that these were the exact goals of the original world fairs too.
- _joel 6y agoDefinitely, there's no difference. Just look at the 1937 Paris Expo.
- tomphoolery 6y agoThis is true, and the reason for why they are no longer a thing is the same reason why companies don't sponsor theme park rides anymore. They simply don't need to. With the ability to reach more people more quickly with less money over our mass media networks, there's no real reason to sponsor an attraction of any kind. At any rate, World's Fairs are still happening, just not in the US... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair
- viksit 6y agoMaybe what we could do in a much more short term is another "Mother of all Demos" [1], focused on more than just the future of computing technology? Have calls to action/RFPs, and have a conference of some sort - the goal is to have one cohesive demo per track. Distribute this thinking across the world, like Pioneer.app does instead of consolidating it in one country or geographical area. And live cast it to everyone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
- buzzert 6y agoI really think the closest thing we have these days is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas every winter. At some point in the last twenty years or so, it became less about companies demoing next year’s products and more about really grand visions of the future (of course, where the company in question was the centerpiece of this grand vision). I believe it was Panasonic in 2020 who had a huge booth showing off a flying car concept, accompanied by a wall-to-wall LED display showing a video of families in the future taking it to work/school/etc. Once I realized that CES is less of a marketing event and more of a modern World’s Fair, I really started to enjoy it a lot more. Even with the corporatism. Can’t wait to (hopefully) go again next year!
- snambi 6y agoWe have been told that technology is the solution to problems we face. But, many problems we face are created by technology itself. May be it is time to look at technology not as a solution. Technology may provide solutions at some times for specific cases. but we need to be very selective and careful about that technology.