What would a Worlds Fair of the Future look like?

I'm still waiting for a flying car.

Flying car? No big deal; saw a flying Honda Accord two years ago after the brakes

failed, or the throttle stuck, or whatever the "fault de jour" was then - it hit the next-door neighbor's upward-sloping front yard (60 mph+, I'm guessing) and wound up in his attic (it then fell out). Not sure that they ever did find the mailbox that was at the initial point of impact. Driver was banged up a bit; house was banged up a lot; car was toast. Hondas fly poorly.

 

So, flying cars - Hondas, specifically, I guess - not that great an idea; it just means that we would have 3-dimensional, rather than 2-dimensional, traffic accidents.

 

BLT, I know that it was a joke, but why in heaven's name would anyone think that everyone having a flying machine at their disposal would be a Good Thing? Yet this

horrible fantasy lives on.

The GENERAL ran to the NY World's Fair under her own power.

 

I hope Mr. Kloke of Kloke Locomotive Works, Elgin, IL, would provide a Civil War era 4-4-0 like this one (www.steamintohistory.com):

 

 

 

Whatever is shown there, it should be held on Mars under the big Dome.

Yes, I'm still a dreamer.

 

And I fly BIG model Rockets too.

Back at ya Russell,I'm a dreamer too. Space travel is a little too far! I'm interested in ideas for worlds fairs on Earth. It could be in Antartica though! Last pristine environment and all that....

 

Mike Maurice

http://www.andyestep.com/future%20city.html

I heard that the biggest obstacle for flying cars is the operator. People get into cars and cannot be bothered to look left and right before pulling out. With flying cars we will expect them to look left, right, up, and down? That won't end well...

 

I found it interesting that Disney took a "pass" on this at Epcot in the big AT&T sphere with the "communication through the ages" theme. The "last stop" used to be people talking to and seeing each other around the world via personal computer. Now that this is common for everyone, it has been removed, and nothing new has replaced it yet.

Agreed on the Flying car holdup.

Moller Int. designed one, called the Skycar.I seriously want one but they are pricey.

FAA holdup: Noise levels and a new Pilots license category, Powered Lift.

And yes, it requires ground school, doctors clearance, and all the rest of a regular pilots license.

Many drivers can not pass this test. Many more would lose it soon after by breaking the rules. The FAA is much stricter than the police.

Moller's Prototype flies, it's mostly computer controlled and does vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL).

That's where the noise limits hit. You want the guy next door revving this thing to max to VTOL off to work 3rd shift at 11PM? It uses 8, yes 8 modified wankel motors to spin up 4 lift fans that rotate flat in normal flight or tilt up for VTOL. It is also somewhat road worthy as it will pass a road safety test, but the suspension is weak for normal use. A nasty pothole could do serious damage.

 

I still want one. And a trip to Mars.

22nd Century.

 

Nuclear fusion for electricity generation.

Hydrogen based mobile transportation.

Artificial intelligence.

Nanotechnology - especially in the medical field.

 

Trains run on time and no traffic jams

Jeez, I'm a pilot and a driver. If most drivers fly like they drive, heaven help us. I can see some one landing their car while playing with their iPhone.

 

A Rheingold BierHaus

 

Or a Ballantine BierHaus

 

 

 

Or a Schaeffer BierHaus

 

 

Wow Ben! That Schaeffer BierHaus looks like it could be modeled from a MTH Mel's Dinner. But, you would need a very big layout to model the World's Fair. Do you know anyone who's got a layout that big?

BTW whatever happend to the World's Fair I haven't heard

of one being held in a long time.

My favorite was the Dinkelacker Pavilion back in 1964 - they didn't check proof!

 

 

Jim

Jim,

 

That photo brings back some great memories.  I attended the fair in 1965 but was too young to (legally) drink.  I made up for it when I attended the Montreal World's Fair in 1967.  At the German Pavilion, it was the first time I paid more than $1 for a beer.  Canada sure put on a great party that year!

 

Bob Osterhoff

www.trainpaper

"Russian dashcam video" would be three times as entertaining.

 

Or cringe-inducing, depending on your viewpoint.

 

Yesterday I watched a Pizza Hut delivery driver pull a sudden U-turn across the path of the 60' articulated city bus I was riding on at the time. The driver had about enough time to blurt out an expletive and swerve to the right to avoid T-boning the inattentive pizza guy. So yeah. 

 

---PCJ

With the way the world is today you will never see another one. Too expensive and a security   Nightmare. 

The next worlds fair will be in 2015 in Milan, Italy. Maybe they will have the new red Ferrari train on display?

 

Bob,

 

We enjoyed the New York Fair as seniors in high school so much that some friends and I took a trip to Montreal in '67 too. Good memories of my very first road trip in my first car - a '61 Chevy Impala.

 

Jim

 

 

 

Was living in New Orleans back in 1984 for the one there. I wasn't knowledgeable of trains then either but remember seeing a large UP Steamer (Challenger?) that was parked during the fair and had some friends that flew to Houston to ride the Daylight into New Orleans.

 

There were some really nice structures built for the fair but political infighting and graft destroyed most of them. There was a particularly nice music arena that fell which was a big disappointment to most of us.

They call them worlds fair's  but in reality they are not. I saw the ' 64 fair and it was great but these days are over.

The US is not even a member of the group that puts them on anymore.  You can read more here: http://online.wsj.com/article/...499805562316993.html

You can look to some of the emerging technologies being explored by companies now to get some ideas into the future.  The shame is that World's Fairs used to surprise and delight attendees who were positive about technology and the future, while now everyone seems to take a more distopian view.

 

For my two cents, I would expect to see:

Electric cars with standard chassis that you can change from van top for transporting the kids to convertable top (see GM Autonomy concept car)

Perfecting cleaning robotics so everyone has robot vacuums and mops (see Roomba)

Super highspeed public transport to get workers into the city faster from further away (see BART system, subways, etc)

More efficient technologies to grow healthy food in smaller spaces (a company in southeast Asia has a hydroponic farm in a rotating vertical elevator that grows upwards so uses less land)

 

All of these things are in development but are contained by profit making and the almighty dollar.  I'd also like to see more done with our oceans, and in general technologies addressing the problems we face today - food production, disease prevention, transportation.

 

I work in the tech field, and find that the senior management is focused on immediate return on investment rather than looking to the future and long term thinking.  I think this shortsightedness is what slows down the technology development machine.

With the state of communications, information and travel today, World's Fairs have lost their significance.

 

Rusty

As long as they have Belgian Waffles and maybe a "There's A Great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of everyday" I'd be happy!

Dave: Immediate profit is the goal of every big business these days. I've worked for companies in the medical field: research had better start paying-off DURING  development, or it will be shut down; and if a competitor is found to be working on something similar, one of the companies will either drop out or sell their research to the other (and employees will be laid-off). The distopian view is the one we've cynically come to expect from these actions.

I miss the hopeful, happy future we used to have, proudly displayed at the fairs.

Guys, I remember at the World's Fairs of the past we used to dream about the future and what could be! Is it really so different today? Sure there is Earth day and all sorts of specialization concerning computerization! Doesn't anybody want to know what a modern billion dollar person might be like? Would he / she /it be capable of space travel? Would interstellar space travel or teleportation be possible? What would solar powered sails be like? Mike

Yes very true. The only thing in the USA today that comes close to a worlds fair is Disney Worlds Epcot Center.

things i remember about the 1964 NY World's Fair...

 

the Ford and GM cities of the future.

still only what you might see in a SciFi movie.

 

a simulated space flight.

i guess that's something we have today... simulated space flights.

 

the Westinghouse Time Capsule.

i suppose someone might see my signature in another 4951 years.

 

the Sinclair dinosaurs.

*wow* ...hey, i was 10.

 

an unbelievably slow monorail ride.

 

Belgium Waffles.

 

no metal detectors, ...anywhere.

I recall Arthur C. Clark's dictum that technology is trivialized eventually: in the 1950s people predicted computers would revolutionize weather forecasting, medicine, etc.  Today a majority of the computing power on this planet is devoted to displaying pornography, computing and rendering blood-splatter in 3-D for real-time video games, or transmitting tweets among adolescents. 

 

It will be the same in the future:

- First, there will be no fair - you will just buy an App that produces 3-D holograms so you think you are there.

 

- We will all stay indoors anyway, within our air conditioned dome, because of the global warming.  Either that or we will all live on the equator because of the new ice age I was warned about when I was a kid.  One or the other - no doubt.

 

- Tweets will prove too long and time consuming for the younger generation and their limited attention spans.  They will be replaced by "eats" - messages limited to a six-character code that can be sent between bites of "faster food", which will now be genetically engineered so French fries and burgers and tacos are healthy for you -- and promotes "correct" brain activity that leads to you to always vote for Fearless Leader, every time.

 

- People over 60 will have lost all traces of cynicism and be eternally optimistic and positive about the younger generation and the future!

My flying car is coming.... All I need now is $300,000  Maybe if I sell most of my trains

http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/flying-cars-waiting-wings-or-poised-takeoff-6C10811266?ocid=msnhp&pos=4