The ’39 New York fair offered an especially grandiose and compelling glimpse of a techno-utopian society poised to materialize within a generation. Its most popular exhibits featured Cities of Tomorrow -- Zions that were to be realized through technological expertise deployed by corporate power and supported by benign government planning. And little wonder these exhibits were so popular: the nation had been through a decade of economic depression and rumors of war swept across the Atlantic. “To catch the public imagination,” historian David Nye has explained, “the fair had to address this uneasiness. It could not do so by mere appeals to patriotism, by displays of goods that many people had no money to buy, or by the nostalgic evocation of golden yesterdays. It had to offer temporary transcendence.”
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Futurism At the Fair: Rituals of Temporary Transcendence
The Frailest Thing: The World of Tomorrow 75 Years Later:
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> “the fair had to address this uneasiness. It could
> not do so by mere appeals to patriotism, by displays
> of goods that many people had no money to buy, or
> by the nostalgic evocation of golden yesterdays. It
> had to offer temporary transcendence.”
And skyscraper-sized parking garages.
This was GM, for cryin' out loud.
;->
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