Thanks Cameron! So excited about this project and your vision for it.
I also liked Anton Howes’s idea for a new Fair:
So what would a modern-day exhibition of industry look like today? We would have to imagine all of today’s specific industry fairs, combined. Like the popular Consumer Electronics Show, but for everything. A place where visitors would actually get to see drone deliveries in action, take rides in a driverless car, experience the latest in virtual reality technology, play with prototype augmented reality devices, see organ tissue and metals and electronics being 3D-printed, and industrial manufacturing robots in action. They would have a taste of lab-grown meat at the food stalls, meet cloned animals brought back from extinction, perform feats of extraordinary strength wearing the exoskeletons used in factories, fly in a jet-suit, and listen to panel interviews with people who have experienced the latest in medical advancement. Perhaps a commercial space launch using the latest technology might be timed to coincide with the event, to be livestreamed on a big screen for all visitors to see. Visitors would naturally meet the inventors and scientists and engineers who developed it all, too.
Visitors would browse the latest in fashion, art, and architecture from all over the world, seeing them alongside historical examples, with the whole event housed in a building made using the latest advancements in materials and construction technology — just as the glass of the Crystal Palace gleamed in comparison to the soot-covered brick of 1851 London, or the iron entrance to the 1889 Exposition Universelle loomed high above Paris (now known as the Eiffel Tower). I actually can’t even fathom what it would have to look like, to inspire the same kind of awe. And the whole thing would, of course, be powered using only the cutting edge of clean energy technology, much like how the great new Corliss Engine drove the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, or how Westinghouse’s alternating current powered the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Perhaps the event might even be made carbon-negative, by demonstrating the latest technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Thanks for resurfacing Anton’s piece as well. He did a great job of highlighting some of the specifics. It’s super important that the Fair promote a sense of agency—that visitors of all types can see someone like them building the future. As Anton writes “Visitors would naturally meet the inventors and scientists and engineers who developed it all, too.”
Thanks Cameron! So excited about this project and your vision for it.
I also liked Anton Howes’s idea for a new Fair:
https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-the-industry-of
Thanks for resurfacing Anton’s piece as well. He did a great job of highlighting some of the specifics. It’s super important that the Fair promote a sense of agency—that visitors of all types can see someone like them building the future. As Anton writes “Visitors would naturally meet the inventors and scientists and engineers who developed it all, too.”