Writing my last post got me thinking about Flushing Meadows Park. This, in turn, got me thinking about the two World's Fairs held there -- the first in 1939 and the second in 1964. Both events were the brainchildren of Robert Moses, the Master Builder who single-handedly designed the infrastructure of modern New York City. (Read up on the man if you have time. His life story is unbelievable.) Though Moses used the Fair as an excuse to turn the Flushing cinder dump into public parkland, the people of New York City saw it as so much more.
The World's Fair gave New Yorkers hope for a bright future when reality offered little encouragement; the first preceded World War II and the second came on the heels of JFK's assassination. One square mile of land in Queens was cleaned up for the cause, and different countries, US states, and major corporations erected lavish pavilions to showcase their products, people, and visions for the future of humanity. If you've ever been to EPCOT in Walt Disney World, that was the general idea. (And by "general idea," I mean that EPCOT was an idea that Walt Disney stole from the '64 World's Fair.)
I love learning about the World's Fair for the same reason I love EPCOT: I derive an inordinate amount of joy from studying my predecessors' expectations of the future. It's inspiring to see what innovations first presented at the World's Fair have enjoyed success (i.e. television, color photography, and the modem) and which never found a place in society (i.e. humanoid robots, Smell-O-Vision, and undersea vacation homes). It's even more interesting to compare our current technology with our grandparents' and parents' expectations of how our generation would live. True, we're not colonizing Mars or traveling at light speed, but I doubt that anyone in 1939 could have ever envisioned anything even remotely resembling the iPhone.
Despite which predictions came true and which predictions never came to pass, one aspect of the entire World's Fair experience can be recalled as indisputable fact: its optimism. The people of 1939 genuinely believed that humans would travel on automated highways and eat meals cooked by machines by 1960. The people of 1964 knew that they'd live to see moon bases and flying cars in the new millennium.
Flushing Meadows Park is still scattered with these certainties. Two time capsules filled with microfilm, "new" materials like stainless steel and nylon, knickknacks, and other symbols of our civilization are buried fifty feet under the cement with instructions not to open until 6939. A forty-foot sculpture of a Buck Rogers rocketship stands in a random driveway behind a building. A geodesic habitat designed by Buckminster Fuller houses forty species of birds at the Queens Zoo. The future of American architecture is slowly rotting despite preservation efforts, but it doesn't matter because most Americans only know it as something Will Smith shot out of the sky in 1997. Meticulous etchings of cars, robots, and transistor radios are underfoot everywhere. Tokens of world peace -- whether they're actual depictions of the world or pieces of native architecture donated by friendly nations -- are everywhere, too.
All of it makes me nostalgic and curious, but it also makes me sad. I'm a smart, forward-thinking research scientist with a firm grasp on technological innovations and a degree in the most cutting-edge discipline on the planet. And you know how I envision the future? Thinner cameras, iPods, and televisions. And that's about it. There are no robot butlers in my old age. No flying cars, teleportation devices, or jetpacks, either. I don't think we'll ever cure cancer or even come close to it. I don't think humans will travel any farther than the lunar surface. I don't envision food, architecture, or fashion significantly changing. No end to world hunger. No world peace.
I don't know if this makes me a pessimist or a realist, but when I walk through Flushing Meadows Park, it's nice to look back, look forwards, and forget.
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