Observation: Saint louis is a very vibrant city with a lot of culture and time killing activities, music, restaurants, site seeing, baseball games etc, but in 1904, perhaps the most grand event saint louis has ever been host to was the world fair, unveiling new technologies, food and culture the average person at the time almost certainly wasn’t privy to. Imagine never knowing what ice cream tasted like before that day, or how beautiful ancient japanese artwork is, or seeing the entire fair lit up with a fantastic brightness the likes of which you couldn’t imagine. X-rays, wireless phones, the automobile, I can only assume it felt like stepping into a brand new century.

Problem: with all of this wonder someone at that time would’ve assumed the rousing success of that fair would have happened many more times in the future, but it didn’t, the last world fair in the united states was held in 1984 in new orleans and what characterized as a “financial disaster” so in 1999 congress passed legislation that prohibited any future world fairs in the US. This event is meant to be a beautiful culmination of technologies and culture, allowing people to learn, take inspiration, and tear down the many barriers we place between what we know and what we don’t; yet such an event does not have political backing because of money, I believe this is a terrible shame, in today’s climate with everyone glued to screens and debates, I think a little “coming together” is warranted as the world is more divisive than ever.

Frame: My idea is for congress to repeal its prohibition of american hosted expositions so that maybe one day saint louis can host another world fair, scrounge up the money from our tax dollars, sell admissions, sell space for companies to show the technological advances they’ve made, live music, art exhibits, invite other cultures and countries and try to enact some of the values we should all hold paramount, unity, knowledge, progress. 

Example: Dubai held a world fair called the 2020 expo in 2021. They have a website dedicated to the event, I can learn everything I need from there, from what I gather it was a massive year long event with almost every country participating. 

Proposed technology, im thinking about using an interactive storyline, so that we can see the growth in particular industries or products after a world fair, like the debut of ice cream in saint louis and looking at the number of distributors selling ice cream in the aftermath of the fair. Or the new filtration system developed by john F Wixford to clean the water supply of saint louis specifically for the fair, and how we use the same basic technology today.