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It's time to build: a New World's Fair

cameronwiese.com

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Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#211

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Animats wrote: post #73

The 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 ahea…

It'd be basically like the CES I think, showing a lot of near-future tech like transparent roll-up screens.

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#212

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Iv wrote: post #162
Animats wrote: post #73

The 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 ahea…

> What could we have in a World's Fair now that looks ahead? I want a roboticized home that cleans itself, that is able to do autorepairs, rooms reconfiguration. I want an auto-laundry and an auto-kitchen. I want it smart enough to manage air flow, temperature and humidity efficiently. I want all that to be voice activated. Please make it offline to not depend on some cloud thingies. I want a powerwall and solar pane…

That sounds like a lot of technology for something you could hire someone to do for you at a fraction of the cost. The main downside of that is that you'd have to deal with a person.

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#213

Post by rapnie »

josephg wrote: post #197
Animats wrote: post #73

The 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 ahea…

> What could we have in a World's Fair now that looks ahead? With a few more years of AI, I want software that can automate engineering - so, I can say “figure out a factorio layout that makes 1 rocket per minute”. Then “play factorio from scratch to liftoff”. Translated into the real world, I want to a robot that can build a brick wall, and an AI that can design and manufacture the brick wall building robot. I think…

> With a few more years of AI, I want software that can automate engineering.

"Ok, AlexaDev. I want you to build a SaaS with the following product requirements ..."

[after a half-hour chat]

"Alright Dave, the MVP is in your shopping cart at a price of $5,000. If you host on AWS then I will be your product development team and evolve your service based on usage statistics and customer feedback for an additional $2,000 monthly subscription fee."

(Of course things will be different, as source code will be proprietary walled garden stuff besides some OSS config scripts, there'll be no fixed-price, and AWS is abstracted away behind the AI services)

half-/s

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#214

Post by orf »

Rule35 wrote: post #190
markdown wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if all of this were true, there's no reason one should be pledging allegiance to the state. You can be proud of your country, your state, your city, and your community but to have to make pledges in front of other people to signal your patriotism is weird to anyone who wasn't brought up within that bubble of propaganda and jingoism. Have you seen footage of North Koreans pledging their allegiance to their govern…

> footage of North Koreans pledging their allegiance to their government You're literally just inventing stuff to get upset about. There's no dictator in America. When you pledge allegiance to the country - or when someone else does - they aren't saying they'll serve anyone's orders, they're affirming their support for something that's actually great. Whatever about the hand and heart - that's a bit demonstrative, bu…

You seem really, really incessantly upset about the idea that not everyone practices patriotism in the same way as you.

So I think these long rambling replies do more to confirm the message you are replying to than you realise.

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#215

Post by Communitivity »

Animats wrote: post #73

The 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 ahea…

I would attribute the prediction failure of the 1964 World's Fair to the pace of change. It seems reasonable that predictability decreases as the pace of societal and technological change increase. The changes from 1939 to 1964 (25 years) pale in comparison to the changes from 1964 to 1989 (gene sequencing in 72, Vietnam war protests and ambiguous end in 73, mass-market cell phones in 73, Internet in 74, PCs in 77, disillusionment with nuclear energy in the 70s, the fall of the soviet union, and much more).

I think the pace of change is such that we can't predict what will be with much certainty, but we can imagine and capture the public's imagination. That may help drive change toward what we want to see, and I think that in itself might be a good reason for a World's Fair - not to predict a future, but to collectively imagine the future we want so that we have a more clear cut vision to strive for.

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#216

Post by neals »

Animats wrote: post #73

The 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 ahea…

Underwater cities seems to be happening more and more, actually

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#217

Post by ant6n »

reaperducer wrote: post #143
ant6n wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure it wouldnt have happened without the fair?

In existing cities, districts like that don't just happen. They are created through urban planning.

Are you implying urban planning only happens for world fairs?

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#218

Post by ramphastidae »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #212
Iv wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What could we have in a World's Fair now that looks ahead? I want a roboticized home that cleans itself, that is able to do autorepairs, rooms reconfiguration. I want an auto-laundry and an auto-kitchen. I want it smart enough to manage air flow, temperature and humidity efficiently. I want all that to be voice activated. Please make it offline to not depend on some cloud thingies. I want a powerwall and solar pane…

That sounds like a lot of technology for something you could hire someone to do for you at a fraction of the cost. The main downside of that is that you'd have to deal with a person.

That’s not how automation works.

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#219

Post by jiofih »

lmm wrote: post #203
jiofih wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get the fuss with the pledge of alliance (non American here). > "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Why is it bad to declare your commitment to the country you’re born in and it’s values? It’s not like you can’t leave (except for the IRS) if you don’t like it.

When you're a child you can't realistically leave, and the pledge sounds rather like a promise to never do so. The people making those pledges have very little idea what values they're signing up to. It has the same vibe as chastity pledges, made by kids who don't know what they're talking about at the urging of their parents.

> sounds rather like a promise to never do so

I just quoted the entire pledge and there is no semblance of that. Interesting how every reply has a different, deep interpretation of it. There must be some cultural context that is not possible to get from the outside.

Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair

#220

Post by basch »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #118
basch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very much pro World Fair revival. But I am also very Cold War revival. We should be launching competitive science wars with each other, not unlike the Olympics. Set objectives, set time periods, when the time and objective expire all knowledge gained is pooled and published for the world, for free. National or International propaganda campaigns to recruit for teams. Spies, espionage, moles. Not just a science fa…

> I am also very Cold War revival. Complete with threats of total annihilation? > We should be launching competitive science wars with each other Don't we have this now with competitive global capitalism? I guess it's not the nationstate so much now as the multinational corporation, though, that are the entities competing. I can kind of understand your wish for a Cold War revival - we certainly had more of a sense of…

I imagine Cold War 2 as a bit more contrived, self-aware, and tongue in cheek. It would need its own Geneva Convention, Oversight Committee.

I'm talking about the Space Race. There might have been some fear of space lasers and spy satellites and whatnot, but for the most part, landing on the moon was purely about pride and bragging rights, and who gets to swing a bigger stick. We need more of that, to get people excited, and to push what we can acomplish, and maybe to make us a tiny bit more reckless. Exploration can be dangerous.

I also believe, from a marketing perspective, branding it as a War and not a competition would engage people more. Football level fanaticism. People arent going to wear jerseys and cheer for a Science Fair the way they would for a Science War. I can imagine selling War Bonds to promote the Science War, with nice prizes, to engage and reward people.

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