World's Fairs and the End of Progress: An Insider's View.

by Alfred Heller. World's Fair, Inc. 1999. 259 pages. Paperback. Available from the Futurist Bookstore for $24.95 ($22.95 for Society members), cat. no. B-2246.

World's fairs have evolved considerably over the years, reflecting changes in the world itself. But the fairs need to be more than

Traditionally, international expositions provided an avenue for unveiling new technological advancements -like the elevator, the motion picture, and the computer - to millions of astonished visitors. But the long-accepted notion of unrestrained industrial progress cannot offer us a viable image of the future, says Heller, because our ecologically stressed planet can no longer sustain it. A former editor of World's Fair magazine, Heller adds environmental advocacy to his concise history of world's fairs and the developments they reflected.

Nineteenth-century exhibitions were dominated by the intricate classification of exhibits, the direct sale of industrial products, and displays of primitive cultures as sideshows or for anthropological study. World's fairs of the twentieth century have become important public relations and image-making venues for particular products, cities, and countries. In recent years, the idea of economic progress has begun to give way to the ethic of sustainable development, according to the author, who previews upcoming exhibitions that will emphasize environmental concerns: Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany; Expo 2002 in Metro Manila; and Expo 2005 in Seto, Japan.

"World's fairs lead public opinion as well as reflect it," Heller writes. In order to promote the idea of a sustainable future, he proposes Expo 2015, a world's fair in San Francisco with the theme "New Paths for Progress." In contrast to 1939's New York World's Fair - which envisioned the future as an urban paradise built around the automobile - Heller's Expo 2015 would use a gigantic electronic model of the earth to demonstrate various environmental themes. The "millennial globe" could be programmed to show demographic and ecological trends over time, projecting alternative scenarios for the third millennium that would be modified by different levels of impact from human behavior, and to dramatize the course of global warming.