It's time to build: a New World's Fair
cameronwiese.com
It's time to build: a New World's Fair
1–10 of 237 posts
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#2The 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?
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#3Was 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...
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#4Was 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/
Expo 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.
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#5We 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.
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#6Was 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/
Expo 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.
I'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.
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#7The 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?
Great 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
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#8Was 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/
I 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.
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#9Naysayers 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.
Re: It's time to build: a New World's Fair
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Expo 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.
I'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…
To 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.