Expo 67: A Fair to Remember

The vision of Expo was to use technology to create a better world. While individual nations had displays, much of the space at Expo was used by private companies to show off newly developed technologies. These included video phone demonstrations at the Bell pavilion, and psychedelic visual effects by chemical companies. One pavilion was called “Man the Explorer”, which included a multi-projector cinema where audiences sat on moving platforms. Expo hoped to generate excitement about the future of technology. Historian and urbanist David Leonard says that "Expos' planners were particularly well aware of the extent to which we would come to live in a digital mass media society … and the role of technology in our lives, in a way, that premeditated a lot of the discussions we're still having about the role of technology [today]." Many industry leaders, such as Tesla founder Elon Musk, continue to generate excitement and public desire for new technology. In 2016, Musk outlined in the Economist magazine his plans to colonize Mars. His goal is to make humans a “multiplanetary-species”. This illustrates how with technology, industry leaders are able to make revolutionary progress towards forming a better world. Another example is the huge enthusiasm for artificial intelligence(AI). AI is the use of computer technologies to perform functions that generally require human intelligence such as decision making and visual perception. In 2016, the Canadian government announced $213 million in funding towards three different universities in Montreal for AI research. Two months later, Google declared $4.5 million for research initiatives at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms. This is more evidence that an ambitious vision for technology is still alive.