Remembrance of things past: Nostalgia for 1964 World's Fair lives on in the Information Age

For Long Islanders of a certain age, the 1964-65 World’s Fair is a fond memory, a place in Queens where personal dreams were inspired by a vision of tomorrow.

Optimism was the fair's main appeal. America faced a nuclear threat from Russia, civil rights struggles at home, and lingering grief from President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963. The World's Fair served as an escape by offering an engaging, often thrilling view of what the future might look like, especially for the young at heart.

Built on a former ash dump by Robert Moses, the World's Fair featured more than 140 pavilions and exhibits that captured this spirit of tomorrow while promoting the technology and corporate consumer goods of the day.

Fairgoers saw innovative ideas come to life, like the desktop video phone at the ATT Pavillion, a herald of the smartphones and FaceTime calls so routine today — one of many ways in which the future might have arrived faster than expected. 

There were visionary examples of high-speed computers, terminals with keyboards, jet pack commuting with a “rocket belt” just like the Jetson cartoons then on TV, and General Motors' “Futurama II” pavilion envisioning what the world would look like decades into the future. 

There were showcases of excellence on the ground and in the heavens: Ford Motor Company publicly introduced its iconic Mustang, and NASA and the Department of Defense sponsored the United States Space Park with an array of rockets, capsules, boosters and satellites that stimulated the imaginations of would-be space explorers of all ages.

A CHANGED WORLD

The world is much changed in these past 60 years. Queens, the borough that once welcomed the world to visit, now reflects the globe itself as Earth's most diverse community with as many as 800 languages spoken by its residents — the very embodiment of It's a Small World.

The pace of life everywhere is faster, technology is even more central to daily living, and the lingering postwar optimism of the day has been blunted. Unfortunately, many of the ills that plagued the 1960s, like war and civil strife, remain and many new challenges seem more complex than ever.

What would a World’s Fair look like today if it returned to that familiar site off the Long Island Expressway? There are a host of possibilities.

For starters, we might build another Unisphere though this new structure would be made from recycled cans and bottles, reflecting America's increasing interest in the environment. Realism would dictate that part of it would be on fire, and part under water.

NEW PAVILIONS

This new World's Fair could feature an Artificial Intelligence Pavilion, where visitors wearing goggles could view new and improved replicas of themselves. It might include a flying robotic taxi ride through traffic into Manhattan that wouldn't be tolled whatever the time of day or level of congestion. Or somebody named “Scotty” who finally beams you up on demand — say, onto the Long Island Rail Road platform at Jamaica where the trains are immaculate, fast and silent.

The fair could feature a pavilion sponsored by Northwell Health, New York's largest private employer, filled with the cutting-edge medical technologies that are helping to keep healthy the baby boomers who were fairgoers in 1964 — along with nascent advances like transplanted animal parts that might keep them alive in years to come.

A new sprawling Eastman Kodak pavilion (yes, the company survives!) might show off experimental holographic cameras that capture images of you minutes, hours or even months into the future. The stuff of utopian dreams or dystopian nightmares, or both?

Perhaps a new fair could provide a TikTok Pavilion — built by the Chinese company that owns it until Congress bans it from the premises — where your voluminous personal information could be downloaded on the spot. 

Or perhaps Elon Musk could introduce an Intergalactic Travel Service where guests book future trips to the moon and beyond.

Or maybe we are too jaded these days for a World's Fair. Perhaps the world is too much at our fingertips, technology is too quickly outrunning our imaginations, and there is too much escapist entertainment at our beck and call to think that enough of us would find inspiration or thrills from a new version of that old spectacular.

Perhaps the 1964-65 World's Fair is better remembered than relived, a symbol of a time when everything seemed possible to those young enough to dream.