S e e . A l s o

unisphere

…was the slogan for the 1964-64 World’s Fair.
Rode the 7 train to Flushing, Queens yesterday.
Walked around the Unisphere, around the kids skating in the dry fountain, and the families playing soccer along the Avenue of Progress.

Do we still have the will to create such grandiose monuments to an idea about the Future ?   Maybe they were just the pipe-dreams of a lot of powerful men who saw the Future as a hybrid state of existence between corporations and nations.  The Future was Large, Impressive, and Right-Around-The-Corner.  But the scale of the park (and the effort it took to build the New York World’s Fairs – 1939 and 1964 – on a former ash heap) are more inspiring than intimidating.  Maybe the least we could do is keep the rust off these old things… a tribute to our own capacity for idealism, even when idealism itself seems as dated as a World’s Fair.

See Also ::  Paleo-Future – concepts of the future from various moments in the past.