A Walk through the Dubai Expo
Walking through the former home of the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai felt like I would imagine an Olympic Village to feel after all of the athletes have left.
We could still marvel at the sheer mass of structures created and feel the energy missing from the air. I was in Shanghai studying rapid urbanization, and it was at that moment that I decided that I wanted to attend one of these World Expos.
When I tell my friends this, the average response is “What’s a World Expo?”
World Expos have evolved from a place to learn about industrial and technological innovation to an exchange of cultures and ideas. They’ve showcased milestones such as:
The Westinghouse Corporation illuminated Chicago’s World Fair in 1883.
At New York’s World Fair in ‘39-40, Bell Labs demonstrated the Voder (Voice Operating Demonstrator) to amazed crowds, hearing artificially produced human speech for the first time.
In Belgium at Expo ‘58, the first Expo after WWII, you could see Sputnik at the Soviet Union Pavilion and then walk next door to the US Pavillion for a cold Coca-Cola.
The world learned about IMAX films at Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan with the screening of Tiger Child. The commemorative leaflet for Expo ‘70 tells us:
The Telecommunications Pavilion exhibited the wireless telephone, which was called “Dream Telephone” at the time, with which one could make an immediate telephone call to anywhere in Japan.
It also tells us these crazy facts:
My time came this year with an invite from the Cartier Foundation to attend the Expo 2020 (delayed to 2021-22 due to the pandemic) with their delegation of women entrepreneurs.
I felt a nagging feeling preparing for my trip to Dubai: Are World Expos still meaningful in a world where we can just google all of this stuff?
In some ways, the experience was disappointing. In the Thailand Pavilion, you watch a video of all of the innovative technology the government is using including smart agricultural drones.
I couldn’t help but wish that they had demonstrated these for us in person, like the Voder or the Dream Telephone from previous Expos:
Voder Demonstration at the 1939 NY World Fair, Wikipedia
The only live demonstrations I saw were music and dances. Are we getting to a point where it is harder to touch and feel and experience awe at our technological advances?
Yet I still loved every minute at Expo 2020.
Despite the occasional not-so-subtle political propaganda, the perfectly produced videos of far away innovation that one probably could have found on YouTube and the fact that it’s far less novel to be able to find authentic Senegalese food outside of Senegal these days, it was incredible to experience such a high velocity of culture, beauty, and optimism.
And that is what World Expos are all about.
Take a short walk with me through the Expo, not to the most famous pavilions, but through the ones that showcase humanity, humor and the magic of an in-person experience.
The Lebanon Pavilion
You enter the Lebanon Pavilion and walk through a dark room of projectors rotating images of art, graffiti and architecture. Lebanese music plays in the background. The sensory experience is amazing, and a breath of fresh air after the poster-filled educational pavilions.
After the entry hallway is an art gallery with political and personal cartoons, followed by a 360 video room playing a loop showcasing the natural beauty of the country. Everyone sits on swings, rocking and watching.
You can feel the resilience and creativity in this space. Lebanon comes to the World Expo not with a single technological innovation to share, but with a sense of hope. It gives us the time and space to pause and appreciate art.
The UK Pavilion
The UK Pavilion
I appreciated the approach taken by the United Kingdom. Any semblance of an educational experience was constructed in glass topped show boxes snaking their way up the line to enter the main attraction, which was a minimalist and modern structure.
The focus was on our future, AI and space exploration.
“Inspired by one of Stephen Hawking’s final projects, 'Breakthrough Message', the UK Pavilion invites you to consider what message we would communicate to express ourselves as a planet should we one day encounter other advanced civilisations in space.”
The result was terrifying for the future of humanity.
The idea is that each visitor contributes a word by sending it through their phones to the UK pavilion, and receives in return an AI generated couplet. This couplet is then added to the Collective Message being formed by all of our words, turned into poetry by AI. Inherent in the design of this message is citizen participation, technology and art.
I chose to contribute the word lemonade.
Here was the prose returned to me:
The Garden is a
Lemonade of passion.
The car has a human
Look and I am a.
Hm.
Ending a sentence with the article a?
I thought that would be a fairly easy rule to avoid.
I press the button to tell “it” to try again.
While the UK Pavilion did not fill me with confidence that we would have something poignant ready to share with other advanced civilisations in space, it did assure me that I do not need to be too worried about the robots taking over anytime soon.
The Ukraine Pavilion
It is worth mentioning the Ukraine Pavilion, not for the farming equipment that they had intended to show us, but for the outpouring of support literally covering the entire building.
The beauty is in the simplicity.
There is a table much like the ones found in elementary school cafeterias in the corner of the second floor covered with packs of post-it notes and mismatched markers. From these materials a tapestry of thousands of messages of hope in hundreds of languages covers every nook and cranny of the two-story structure.
While posters and videos describing technological advances might feel distant, the Ukraine Pavilion showcased that our real superpower as a species lies within human connection. And this reminder of what can happen when hundreds of people share a feeling in the same physical space every day is much more important than any single piece of information conveyed.
So what can we still gain from spending a day or more at a World Expo in an increasingly globalized and digital world?
I didn’t go to many of the Pavilions that made the “Best of” lists. The lines were long, and I was content to take-in the structures from afar. This walk I’ve taken you on is not an exhaustive tour.
Walking through the World Expo can give us a sense of our identity as global citizens, a chance to pause and appreciate culture and beauty and a space to actively play and explore.