"Tomorrow" has come ... and gone?
It was on this day, in 1939, that the New York World's Fair opened its gates to the public under the banner of Building the World of Tomorrow. Reviewing that fair in its own context is a sobering experience. In a manner similar to Disneyland's Tomorrowland (which in 1998 underwent an almost total facelift making it no longer the vision of tomorrow of my youth) the fair projected a sort of hope which today rings both anachronistic and naive. In the words of one of the sites devoted to the fair:
From its inception to its closing ceremonies, the Fair promoted one of the last great metanarratives of the Machine Age: the unqualified belief in science and technology as a means to economic prosperity and personal freedom.
The machine age has been superseded by the electronic age, by the television age, by the internet age, but it seems that each brings with it the old baggage of that unqualified belief. Sixty years from now, through what media will we be told of the beliefs and hopes of the present reigning media?
As is to be expected, numerous web resources both report on, and reflect upon, the fair. Some of these can be found here, and here. A truly touching personal recollection of visiting the fair can be found here.
Go to: On regaining a cyberdentity.