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Is the day of World's Fair glamour really gone forever? Photograph: Spencer Platt / Getty Images Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Is the day of World's Fair glamour really gone forever? Photograph: Spencer Platt / Getty Images Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

We need to bring back the World's Fair

This article is more than 9 years old

Can you imagine Beyoncé and Michelle Obama waving from the front seats of a hovercar? It's a lot better than boring expos and Silicon Valley keynotes

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the iconic World's Fair in Queens, New York, which brought together the likes of Liberace, Andy Warhol, the Kennedys and Masai tribesmen. A monument to Jetsons-style futurism, several fixtures of the fairgrounds still stand. And while the event was, in many ways, a moralistic corporate circus, the 1964 fair still looms large as a perfect blend of design, pop culture and technology.

If such a thing happened today, it'd be the toast of the tech blogs and the talk of Twitter, right? After all, even the smallest update to the iPhone operating system is enough to pique our interest. There's an entire sub-genre of TED talks devoted to predictions about the distant future. And with technology such an ascendant US industry, our desire to speculate on what the world might look like in several decades hasn't diminished.

Which is why it's surprising that the anniversary nostalgia has failed to raise many questions about the state of World's Fairs today. The website of the Bureau of International Expositions, a group that is sort of like the International Olympic Committee for these things, explains that today's expos – the term "fair" was retired in 1967 – have "become a unique platform for international dialogue, for public diplomacy and for international cooperation". Which is to say, really safe and boring.

No wonder you didn't hear much about the last expo (in Yeosu, South Korea in 2012) and that you likely aren't eagerly anticipating the next one (planned for Milan in 2015).

In 1964, Isaac Asimov predicted that the World's Fair of 2014 would feature "underground cities complete with light-forced vegetable gardens", kitchens that prepared breakfast automatically and flying vehicles. No such innovations were on display in Yeosu. "The 2014 fair," Asimov continued, "will feature an Algae Bar at which 'mock-turkey' and 'pseudosteak' will be served" due to the cost and environmental impact of animal agriculture. Closer – although that was probably just the vegan tent.

Asimov was right about the prevalence of miniature computers, cordless gadgets, video calls and 3-D movies in 2014. Much of the jaw-dropping technology he listed is now commonplace in many countries – certainly in those that can afford to underwrite pavilions at modern expos. But the expo sponsors and exhibiting countries fail to look much further into the future than 2015, much less inspire the public to speculate about 2064 and beyond.

People are, nonetheless, still showing up for these things. The 2012 expo in Yeosu drew more than 8m visitors over the course of three months. It boasted "the Big-O, which uses lights and lasers to project kaleidoscopic shows on a giant screen of water" and a large aquarium; events included a beach clean-up, model international-relations talks, and powerpoint presentations. Large pavilions dedicated to each of the participating countries featured enough modular seating and brightly colored art installations to rival the Google campus. Not surprisingly, coverage of the Yeosu expo tended to focus on the benefits to local tourism, not the futuristic visions advanced by the fair itself.

Expos are "a unique PR opportunity" for the host country, according to Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales, secretary general of the Bureau of International Expositions. Barack Obama recently announced that Americans – namely those who work for him in the White House – were anticipating the 2015 expo as an opportunity to eat and shop in Milan. He seems far more excited about the possibility of some pasta and fine leather goods than the chance to "showcase American innovation to improve health and nutrition of people around the globe". Who wouldn't? Global nutrition is an important issue in the here and now, but not the sort of sexy topic that gets people buzzing.

And maybe that's why the World's Fair – sorry, "exposition" – doesn't really matter anymore. It does more to expose current problems and solidify existing international bonds than it does to inspire flights of futuristic fancy.

Outside the realm of international expos, the practice of multinational groups coming together (with corporate sponsorship) to showcase innovation is still alive and well. At the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the tech world decamps to Las Vegas to see what's new or next in gadgets from companies based around the globe. But these days most explicitly "international" events tend to be competitions relegated to the realm of sport, like the Olympics or World Cup, or wanly anticompetitive venues for glad-handing, like the modern expo. Global tech companies compete for market share, not exhibition space, and we speculate about life in the distant future in online conversation, not convention halls.

The internet has made in-person gatherings like the World's Fair less vital. But even though we're long past the techno-utopian sixties, we're still collectively interested in the technology that will shape our daily lives in the decades to come. The problem is that most of us can't afford a vacation to discuss it in person.

Still, I have to believe there's a demand for the sort of carnival-meets-convention described in 50th-anniversary reminiscences. Can you imagine the tech companies of today, pulling back the curtain on a few of their most forward-thinking projects long before you could buy them, or embarking on new ones just to showcase at the expo? Can you imagine Beyoncé and Michelle Obama waving from the front seats of a hovercar? The image is at once totally plausible and completely absurd– which is exactly what a World's Fair should be.

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