126: Cam Wiese - The World’s Fair

In this episode, we're joined by Cam Wiese to discuss his new World's Fair project

https://worldsfair.co/ We also discuss how to change culture, break stagnation, and build a better future. 

Transcript:
William Jarvis 0:05

Hey folks, welcome to narratives. narratives is a podcast exploring the ways in which the world is better than in the past, the ways that is worse in the past towards a better, more definite vision of the future. I'm your host, William Jarvis. And I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this episode. I hope you enjoy it. You can find show notes, transcripts and videos at narratives podcast.com. Okay, how are you doing this afternoon?

Cam Wiese 0:43

I'm great. This is rad. This is a cool setup. It's cool. Thank you. Well, first haven't been in the comments before and then two, three, cool. Podcast. This fashion is fantastic. I'm all about it

Unknown Speaker 0:53

IRL. You know, I love it. I love it. Well, Kim, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show. Do you mind giving us a brief bio and some of the big ideas you're interested in?

Cam Wiese 1:03

Yeah. So British German, we see and are always interesting. Um, so just like, obsessed with this one single idea, this one single project, which is the revival in the reimagining of the World's Fair. And we used to host these grand events that captured the nation or captured the world's imagination, through story and experience. And we haven't had one haven't had a great one since 64. And I think it's a shame. And we need to culture to regain this sort of hope for the future. And remember, kind of the sort of great things we're capable of in a World's Fair, might just demonstrate that.

Unknown Speaker 1:38

I love that. Can you talk about a little bit about the history of the World's Fair what it is what it was? And you know, why it went away? Or do you have any sense of why it went away?

Cam Wiese 1:45

Yeah. The why it went away is like the entrance like the most kind of interesting question. Because you still have these events, like known as like the World Expo, I should before I before I go into the history, let me start with kind of the what the World's Fair it is. Because a lot of people aren't aren't familiar, you have the world's cup, and you had the Olympics, which are mega events that people know today. And the World's Fair is a type of mega event. Physical event ran for often six plus months on hundreds, if not 1000s of acres of land. Gotcha. And served as a way to kind of showcase the latest and greatest in technology and innovation ideas vehicle. And they are in you know, in some of them were used as economic development engines for for cities like Spokane, Washington, right, New Orleans. San Antonio, right. But there's this class of fares that I consider like the great fares. Yeah. So you have the ones that really were focused not on economic development, but on the revitalization, and kind of the sort of vision for something bigger for a specific city. Gotcha. Particularly, you know, 1915, here in San Francisco, was built as a way to kind of get the city back up and running after the great fire Gotcha. In Chicago in 1933, you had a Century of Progress exposition, which was kind of this this light amidst the darkness of the Great Depression. And I can go on and on, but we had these events, and they ran really, again, up until the 60s, and they were some in the 70s. Some of the 80s. Last one in the US was in 1984. And a lot of people asked, like, what happened to these, like, why don't we run these anymore? Yeah. And they're really kind of three, three things. One is the competition from Disney's Epcot. Epcot opened in 82. And it was designed originally designed to be a city, which is a whole nother topic. I'm having fun. But the the one that they ended up kind of creating was intended to be a permanent world's very sad that the country showcase. And yes, the pavilions, and that was kind of the thing that people went to if they want to see the future. Yep. But you also had the kind of contrasting economic development engine right, big events with the Olympics and the World's Fair in 84. Got it. So you had Peter Guber off who ran the Olympics in Los Angeles? He could have he could have came in, and you want to go into this? Okay. I, if you can pull me out, if you will. Okay. I'm happy to. Yeah. Peter, rube Roth, who was hired to run the Los Angeles Olympics committee. Yeah. And at the time, everyone was like the Olympics are done. Yeah. Right. The previous ones hadn't done well. Nation national credit, flex, and repeat who brought that being a savvy businessman rather than a politician or a bureaucrat came in and said, you know, this thing just needs a new business model. Yeah. So instead of, you know, trying to get the city to pay for it, they had entirely privately funded and they did it by selling the broadcasting rights of the dice to, I believe was ABC for three. Only the fact that this was like two three heads A million dollars. And that made the Los Angeles, Los Angeles Olympics like, the most profitable Olympics in history, right. And all that money has continued to fund Los Angeles like sports programming for the last 50 years. Right. And city saw that into like, whoa, the Olympics. Yeah, we want to know exactly, exactly. Because they also had the contrast of the 84 World's Fair in New Orleans, that ended in bankruptcy, there was a lien on the event, like halfway through, there's some organized crime corruption is very, very sketchy sort of set of circumstances, and, you know, then didn't have good marketing back then. So people were like, Oh, this thing isn't gonna isn't going, I'm not gonna go. Yeah, so they ended up like not hitting their numbers, which are also based on faulty fraudulent data. And, and then, you know, the kind of world's fair they're, like, kind of fell off is like Olympics over the fairs. And then the last piece is just like the, you know, there's a lot of talk in new least, tech circles around kind of stagnation and progress. And you know, what the, what the fuck happened in 1971? Yeah, for a thing. And so you had this cultural malaise that I think is is an interesting layer on top. And with all the innovation and all the developments of new technologies being funneled into the world of software, right? There wasn't a lot to showcase right affairs, or at least there would have been, but it required a little bit more imagination, because it wasn't as easy as saying, like, hey, Henry Ford wanted to bring the Model T and set up an assembly line. Right, right. Or, you know, there are countless other examples, but there wasn't as much concrete stuff to show off. Right? And so it just was like a harder lift for people, especially people in cities who weren't, like, on the frontier of technology, if

Unknown Speaker 6:48

you will. Right. That makes sense. That makes sense. I'm curious, what does it take to make one of these events successful

Unknown Speaker 6:54

today, you know, you mentioned like, broadcasting rights powering, you know, the LA Olympics, and, and that leading to a lot of success. We see like a real challenge today in that how do you create something that is self funding? In some sense, that is a mega event. In most the Olympics. Now, it seems like they barely make any money, or they lose a lot of money, especially the cities that put it together? How do you think about making these events kind of successful?

Cam Wiese 7:17

Yeah, I think the Olympics serve as a really good example for this sort of like this problem is people don't think mega events can be profitable, I don't think they can be run efficiently, right. And part of the problem, though, is that like, just to just to kind of sidestep into like a quick tangent on Olympic Olympic Games. Like, the way the Olympics is set up, is you have the International Olympic Committee, which manages all of the like, they're the ones after after LA was successful at four. They're like, You know what, we actually want that money. Guys like Los Angeles gotten at four but no other Olympics, because the IFC was like, Oh, we want this right. So all the sponsorships, all the broadcasting rights, yes, flow up to the IOC. And then the IOC like then has a bidding process for cities. And the way they dole out the bids is pretty much based on like, who gives them the most money who puts on the most extravagant show? And like the incentives are really skewed because the IOC has no vested interest in Rick's continued success of the infrastructure that's put in place for the Olympics. It's like, who's gonna spend the most we don't care what you're gonna do with it after? Right? Like, exactly it if we want to put on a good game. Yeah. And I think there's, there's like things that that we can draw on from the way the Olympics, the problems, the Olympics, to think about how we would do a World's Fair today. Yeah. Would you not want to start with the city? Because you start with a city or immediately pigeonholed to the politics and the budgets? And if you take any money from any tax collection entity, then like, it quickly becomes political and bureaucratic and like, right, doesn't get off the ground. Exactly. We've seen this. There are several attempts since 84. To do a World's Fair, they've all fallen victim to the same issue. The other is, how do we have a legacy plan in place? Yeah, for the site after the fairs hosted? Gotcha. So there's some cool opportunities, there's a lot of this new cities movement that's taking place. And there's a possible how might we use a wheelchair to subsidize the economic or streamline the economic development of one of these new city projects? Or, you know, how to do something with land taxes? Right, exactly. Yeah, can get into? And then, obviously, we have the internet. Yeah, right. We have this incredible, you know, means of distribution and communication that really could unlock all sorts of new opportunities on both the media and V kind of virtual fronts for something like the fair. And so he paved the land, you pair this sort of like, there's also this this other component of this, which is like how do you actually just run the event? Like a, like a business, right? Not like a, you know, economic development project? Yes. And if you do that, you know, you sell the pavilion spaces to companies and they pay for it. You know, you sell tickets, you kind of do all the standard things but like to go get like This isn't the best person but you can put It's like Disneyland Disney where like, you're exceptionally profitable endeavors, right? And like, you know, it can be done. Yes. 10s of millions people go every year, right. And I think like you could do something somewhere for the right just requires like new innovative thinking on the business model. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 10:17

Makes sense makes that. So you just got to be a little bit more creative. And there are some good ways like,

Cam Wiese 10:21

there's no, there's no playbook for this, right? Like I actually there is there's there's an old planning guide for one of the past fairs that kind of outlines the process for how they, how they fund it, how they developed it. And it's like, really fast, because it is very similar time that to the one thing right now, economically, culturally, like geopolitically, like this is what we did, this is what worked, right. And like they set up some principles that I think would be fair organizers, of which there don't appear to be any other than, you know, me. would benefit from learning from that's great. That's

Unknown Speaker 10:54

great. We think it would cost to set up like a modern World's Fair equivalent.

Cam Wiese 10:59

I mean, this is depends on, like, which cost you want to factor in. Yeah, right. If we're talking total cost of development of like, land, land acquisition, taking a greenfield site and like, converting it into something usable roads, water infrastructure, all the buildings like the total, like money in, it's probably, I would compare it to Disneyland Shanghai, which was about a 6 billion $6 billion project. Gotcha. But obviously, like, that is not all, like, cost, right? It's not, it's not all like, you know, money being sunk into a pit, you have the development land, you have some of the buildings that have department infrastructure, etc. So, I know that's, that's kind of what I based on, but like, this is a big project. Yeah. And so obviously, I'd like, you know, I would like to find someone who is big projects like this, to dole out the financial models, but yeah, it's, it's not a it's not a, you know, 100k, you know, do it in the dirt in the Golden Gate Park, sort of sort of thing.

Unknown Speaker 11:55

Exactly. How do you think about bootstrapping, something like this from? Nothing into like, a actual world where

Cam Wiese 12:04

this is the this is? This is the question. Yeah, cuz, you know, the vision is great, you know, end of the decade, like what, like open the gates, but how do you actually get the resource, you need to like, start and then kind of iterate like, it's not the right term, like MVP isn't the right frame to think about this, either. It's like, how do we just it's more about how do how do you build a team that can demonstrate like capacity? Right? It's not about like, is this impossible to do? Like, it's very, not a hard thing. We build real estate projects we build theme parks are the same. So you have people who creatively tell stories with physical spaces, and through films, like there's nothing new about like any of this? Yeah, the challenge is, like, you know, you have to pair the like, the font, you have to find the funders, yes, right. Find the people who have a talk who, like want to see the sort of thing exists in the world, right? And who are willing to be like, you know, what, like, let's take, I'll say, like milestone based bets, yes. to, like, see this thing developed. And so the way I think about it is like, you know, again, in line with demonstrating capacity, it's like, Okay, we have this big thing that we want to do. Right, so what is like, actually, thread here, this three line is actually slightly different. It's, like, the thing that jumping back to the beginning thing that made some of those I mentioned, like, there's certain fares that were really great. Yes. And the thing that made them great, was not their size, not their location, not, not the things that they showed off, necessarily, but they were all focused on creating a feeling for people, it was this feeling of hope, and wonder and awe, make sense. And so that is the thing that's, that separates, like, the fares that people remember nostalgically, and the ones that like people, like don't know about, right, and, and so when I think about this, and how we break it down, just like, ultimately, at the end of the day, like the fare is just like an anchor. Yes, right. The big mega event is an anchor, right? That is communicating and expressing, like, celebrating this feeling, or giving people this feeling just at the largest possible scale. Right? And so to get there, we just have to take that feeling and for how do we deliver that in like, ways today, and then next month, and next year that both like, captures that feeling for people, right? And kind of develops the capacity of the team to like, go execute on larger and larger credit projects, because like, the last thing on this is like, again, all this is doable, but like it requires, like a team that has trust with each other right? And have good relationships and like right, can like work well and you don't go run a five plus billion dollar infrastructure project with like a team that doesn't like working on exactly how do you like but what are the different jumps? Yeah, right. So Exactly, exactly. It's a complicated thing.

Unknown Speaker 14:45

Absolutely. What's the kind of smiles what you're starting with the beginning.

Cam Wiese 14:50

So the, really, the way that we've broken the fare down like that the grand event is based On this framework of hope. And, again, it's an academic framework. But I think it's useful to think about like, you have an order of Hope you have to have three things. You have to have goals. Yeah, stop at the mountain. Where do you want to go? Jeff pathways? How do we go from where we are today? Up the mountain to reach that goal? And three, you have to have agency has like, Do you believe that you have the agency to take the pathway to reach the grid. And so when we think about, like, what is the like, end end of the decade fair look like? It's based on that sort of thing. So we have the pavilions, and these these realms that some folks I did a poster campaign that were released, like art that represents each of these core themes. And those, those represent the work being done today to build the world of tomorrow. But then what we want, but that's only the pathways piece, right? And then we want to give people that hope. So don't what we're doing is designing this like immersive, like the sort of immersive world stuff. They're setting this fictional aspirational future, where all the technologies that people saw at the fair, are like, played out, you know, very cool 30 to 40 years into the future to see like, Oh, here's how amazing how vibrant and beautiful our world could be, as a result of these technologies, these things are not going to destroy humanity, they're not going to like, they're going to change things. But like, ultimately, just like every other sort of, like, all the other progress in the past like world is ultimately gonna be better as a result. And so what we want to do is take one of those worlds, yeah, and develop kind of an immersive activation. I want to open 18 to 24 months from now. Yeah, it's November 2022. Yeah. So I did like 1824 months. And this won't like, give guess if 100,000 people or so over over the course of a few weeks, or a few months, the opportunity to step into this world and expect what life could be like in that in that world. But then obviously, like, that's still a big piece. So we're working on how do we design like a pavilion concepts? Yes, that will like show people some of the pathways through an immersive experience in the next year or so. And then we're also working on kind of cooking up a couple of things in the media, from the experience front, to just, again, demonstrate capacity, like on the day to day so that we can stack up to doing like a larger event, and then a larger experience in that larger experience. And then go from there. Like

Unknown Speaker 17:16

how did you? How did you come to the World's Fair originally?

Cam Wiese 17:21

I mean, so I mean, I'm from Seattle. Yeah. And I remember like, I moved around a lot as like, as kids, like, my dad was doing the kind of corporate thing. Yeah. And, but we'd always fly back to visit my grandparents. Yeah. And I always remember flying into Seattle airport, getting the car and it was often raining. In the Pacific Northwest says it does. Yeah. And driving up. I five. Yeah. And looking at the window and seeing the Space Needle. Yeah. And it just like, to me, it was the coolest piece of architecture I'd ever seen. Wow. Like, what like, and I didn't know what that was, but it was like, it's a really cool symbol. Exactly. And I'm like, I like this. Yeah. And, you know, so as I grew up my resume, oh, wait, like, what was this? I started asking questions like, what was this for? Right? Like, we built this, like, why? Yes, for World's Fair, yeah, what are the world's fairs, etc. It was like, always in the back of my mind. Yeah. But they're kind of inception point was. It's probably two years ago at this point. Just like the idea Inception point was like, sitting in, in the airport with all my friends. Were talking about how all the science fiction, yes. And a real taste. It's very all, not all a lot of is very dystopian. Yes. Right. The popular science fiction movies are painting a vision for the future is not exciting or not compelling, right? They make for good movies, yes. But they don't accurately represent the sort of world I think we all want to live in. And so I kind of got off my soapbox, as I as I often do, and found myself just on this rave. I'm like, why are all these movies dystopian? Exactly? This is ridiculous. What if we got all these science fiction authors? In one room? We made them design the coolest possible future? What would that look like? What didn't movie look like? What if? What if we turn that thing into a place that you could actually go and step into this world? You could see how awesome things could be like, definitely, what would that look like? Wait a minute. Can we do this? That's like the world's fairs. Like, what was this? And then like, it was it was that sort of moment where I'm like, oh, World's Fairs, right? What happened to those and you know, put it off for a while, but have become kind of an amateur, you know, World's Fair historian. Yes. And realize, like, again, like, these plants serve a huge, huge purpose and like, getting people excited about the future, especially during really dark and depressing times. Yeah. And it just seems to me to be like so blatantly obvious that like the thing we need now, culturally is like, is this hope for the future, as I've said, right, and like, we've done this before, like, this seems to be a pretty obvious path like that move forward, right? And no one was working on it like, right, this needs to be done that So here we are. I love it. I

Unknown Speaker 20:01

love it. Do you? Do you think something like this is enough to put defibrillator paddles in the West, so to speak? I think everything is back. It's morbid. Yeah. I do love that. I do love the effort. Like I think it is a it's a really good idea. Do you think it's enough on its own? Or is there some other key piece that needs to happen as well to kind of, you know, restart progress?

Cam Wiese 20:25

It's a great question. I certainly don't think it's, it's like the only thing I think, yeah. Like, really, it's going to take kind of a more of a cultural movement. Yeah, right, that I'm hoping to just like play. I in like, the fair, I'm just hoping to play like a, like a small part. But more broadly, we, we definitely need more stories being told about the future that are exciting, right? We need more people choosing to build rather than to like, definitely, petition. Yes. I need to think of a more catchy way to say this, but just like there's there's far too much like, oh, everything's broken. Oh, I'm so frustrated. The system and the status quo, like the system's not working for us, like, we live in the most incredible time. Yes. Like, nobody in the right mind would even, like, consider jumping into time machine going back, you know, years, like the world was not great back then. And today, you have all this technology, you have all this infrastructure, you have all these sort of like the world's great for everybody. Like in comparison to what it was. And like, we needed I lost my thread

okay. Is this sufficient? It's nice. Okay. The Fair's necessary, not sufficient. broader cultural movement. Yeah, like, it's like, there's just a lot of things we need to do. Yeah, like, as a culture to, like, really appreciate like, where we're at now, and where we're going. And again, the fair is like a piece of that. But again, like, we need, we need more. So I think this is okay, this is BS, we need people to like not complain, and to go build, like, go be entrepreneurs desk, go start, like, go solve problems, right? Go do the hard work of not like what is not working, whether it's like, it can be software, but a lot of the stuff that needs needs work is like not glorious, it's not sexy. It's like, Go run for Paulette, like local politics. Like that is an extremely high point of leverage for like, yes, actually effecting positive change. Yeah. And like, very few people are taking that like, takes it seriously. Like, as I was telling you before, I think what am i takes is like, the most courageous thing you can do now? Yeah, like in the world to is to go into politics go into the machine. And like, you may get eaten alive by it. Yeah. But if you don't, like you may, like you may just be able to, like, do something important.

Unknown Speaker 22:48

Yeah, exactly. Especially at the state level, local government level, I think it's a very high leverage point to do a lot of good today. Just in comparison to Yeah, I think it's much less competitive. There's a lot of so you can, you can have a much if you're talented person, the delta between you and the next person who would be in that spot, is often much higher.

Cam Wiese 23:09

Yeah. And I think like this, again, as I was talking offline, like, people now have the tools and the resources to do this. Like, if you're not in one of the major cities, like you can still like, probably you can work remote. Right? You have, obviously means and like, yes, your point, the delta between, like, even the experts is probably like pretty large. Yes. Like, if you just choose to take like to be courageous, and to step up and take responsibility for like, building something great in your local community like you can, and like, you should not you should you must, if you have the capacity to do these things, like you have almost a moral imperative to do them. Because like, if not you then who are like, this is sort of the attitude like culturally, anything that I believe is necessary. It's like, how do we get more people broadly being like, you know what? I'm gonna go do something about this, whether it's okay. There's a contention here. Yes, absolutely. It's kind of related, but I think it's hilarious example. It's like you have over in Oakland. There's like, 1000s, of potholes that like, need to be filled. Yes. And everyone has complained about how shitty it is to drive over there. And it's like, it's not fun. Yeah. And they've gone to the city and like, Hey, can you please do something else? Can you please fix this? Yeah. And the city, you know, of course, like, Oh, it's a backlog, which we'll get to, we'll get to it. Like, we're tired of this see of this vigilante group of citizens who rented a box truck in cement mixer, and they're literally days out pouring like concrete or asphalt into these potholes to fix them because the city won't. Yeah, and there's just this clip, I don't know, on the news, or probably made its way around Twitter, or somewhere on the internet where, like, some interview where like, they're all messed up, they're like, no one from the feds like, it's not about us. It's about the movement. Yeah, it's like, that's phenomenal example of people who saw a problem. Like this needs to be fixed. No one is like no one else is gonna come do this. Like we have to take care sponsibility for it, right? Just like, it's that sort of granularity, like local level, like, in your neighborhood on your block, like, pick up the trash after yourself. Like, don't just let don't like no one else is going to do it. Right? No one's configured the trash. No one's gonna go like, you know, clean up your city, if no one's gonna go, you know, solve the problem you care most about in the world? Like, you have to do it. You have to do it.

Unknown Speaker 25:19

Yeah. I love that message. I think it's really important. Do you think there's something perhaps like, in our culture where we've gotten, you know, perhaps American elites or something have gotten quite wealthy, they're doing better than they ever had before? In economic terms, and things are pretty comfortable. And so there's like, just less than standard to go out. And it's all the problems. You just maybe you move to your gated community, you know, you move up here to the nice place in Hayes Valley. And yeah, the problems don't come up the hill or something like that. So you don't worry about it.

Cam Wiese 25:50

I definitely there's something to that. I mean, Ross. Douthat, does it? Yeah. What is the Deccan side? I think this is his thesis, isn't it? It's like, have you read the book? Yeah, I think I think this is his point is like, everyone should get comfortable. And then, you know, people with the means with the capital, like, they can like isolate themselves from the problems like, Oh, cool. You wrote about crime, like, well, I'm, you know, I have money. So I'm gonna go hire private security. Right? I'm just gonna move in like this. Yeah, I definitely think there's, there's something to that. But the people who are in those positions, like they're no longer like, they're not the ones who are on the ground doing the building. Yeah, they have some some swayed influenced by politically, maybe, perhaps culturally, but, you know, at the end of the day, like, that doesn't change the sort of circumstances for like, you and I, and all of our friends and you know, people who are like, just starting out in their careers, like don't like are just able to be scrappy to be like, hey, like, they're the ones who can go solve these problems, like, yeah, kind of passing it off or like, like delegating the sort of response with like, those who have like, money or power or influence, like, yeah, is, is almost a cop out. Right? Like, yes, it's a problem. But that doesn't mean that Yeah, well, all of us can't do anything about it. You know, gotcha. Gotcha. Makes sense. It makes sense. And what do you what do you think? Can I can ask you questions on this pocket? Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. Again,

Unknown Speaker 27:04

I do think there's something wherever the capable people this weird thing happened where, you know, so one of my old friends, we were just started together, he, you know, his grandfather did sa t. And, you know, this is really good thing. We slept up all the smart people from all the rural places and put them at university and we and collaborate them together, and you get all these economic gains. But then it pulls all the talent out of like, all the rural places, and then like, you know, there's just the society starts to break down. And we wonder what's going on? And I don't know, I think there's something about elite responsibility and fragile elite, I mean, cultural leads. Yeah. And not necessarily like, I do think this is separate from income by completely and wealth as these are two completely different vectors.

Cam Wiese 27:48

Totally. In then like the even like, the the cultural, it's like the value system that they're they're propagating is not one that's like, really beneficial for anyone but themselves. Yeah, I think it's like, and then everyone's detached from the consequences. Like, right here, like on the coach like, oh, yeah, this policy is a great idea. Yeah, sure. It's like yeah, for you have no like no conflict. Yeah, you have no clue what was going on the consequences of like, this policy, this behavior, like you don't actually affect you, but you like, are on your up in your high tower, if you go like, up on your Hill and in, you know, yeah. What's the hell it's ever just go? Why am I blanking on this? Like, you're putting like, your pin pack heights up on your tower? And you're like, oh, yeah, we should do this. And like, it never sleeps up to you. Right? And so like, you can you can virtue signal and you can grandstand and kind of talk about these things. And you know, Phil, kind of the virtuous about it, but like, at the end of the day, like, we need to, like there needs to be some sort of thing to like, actually get people deleting to stop, like, meddling in like, the everyday people problems and think about themselves less as, like, the gatekeepers or the like, you know, hey, I know it's best for everybody. And like, I don't know, I don't. I'm delving too far out of my expertise.

Unknown Speaker 29:02

But yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I'm curious, I'm curious. Do you ever worry at all that you go up, report the World's Fair? And there's just not enough good technology to showcase or something like that?

Cam Wiese 29:20

Huh? No, no, I think it'll be there. I think I think it'd be there. I mean, because I think a lot of people think about, like, the world's fairs. It's like, there's just misperception, it's like, oh, it's just like, CES is like, there's gonna be a bunch of boots. It's like, no, no, no, like, there's no there's no boots, right. It's, you know, giant pavilions but the pavilions are not like, showcasing like one individual technology. They're, they're focused on telling the stories of these technologies. And this is the fundamental difference is like, nobody cares about like, boom, supersonic jet, or the tunnels or the Tesla. Right, right. They care about like what it does for them. By the lives and their families, yeah, nobody cares about gene editing, except for when it's like, hey, this can cure you have this like incurable. Exactly where this can help your loved one like your child who was sick from, like leukemia, like get better, like races like, these things don't matter in the abstract. And this is what people don't understand. It's like, it's, the technology is cool. Yeah, you can watch it on YouTube. But like, the story, isn't there, like, how does connect? How does resin? How does this like change your life for the better? Yeah. And like, this is part of the adversarial relationship with like, technology. And, you know, like, there's the world at least well, now we know, it's partially a result of, you know, Salzburger, you know, telling all this journalists to report positively on technology. And we'll see how that how that changes narrative. But like, you, you just like, you can't just put a thing out there and be like, Oh, hey, look, this is great. Like, Brad, you all should want this. Because you have to do what Steve Jobs did was like, hey, 1000 songs in your pocket? Like, no, we're doing this thing now. And Right, exactly. Like, you know, and Elon was like, Hey, this is gonna convert the world to electric cars. Like, I mean, it's unfortunate, like, those are the two like most prominent examples that everyone can write, to connect with, like, those little role models that that people have is, like, how you go build the future? Exactly. I think like, that's a different kind of vector of changing is necessary, like making role models more accessible. But it The point is that, like, the individual technology, like so much positive stuff happening the world right now, there are so many great people working on solving, like our toughest problems. And, you know, we may have to tell like, the story of the future of flight may be a bit more like, abstract or, but like a place thing, like, you know, the future of energy, like, there's like a lot of room to play. Right? So should we think about this from like a rent tell stories about the various technologies based on what's being done today? Right, rather than like, Okay, what, what companies are, like, commercially on the market or publicly, because there's like all this work being done in research labs, and DARPA, like, in private institutions that like, yeah, are very, very, very well funded and run by very competent people, especially like the private institutions that are now starting to emerge. Like, there's lots of stuff that's going to come out of those places, too, so I'm not too worried about it. Very cool.

Unknown Speaker 32:09

Very cool. So as we're coming to the end of the episode here, I want to ask you, what can you go over? Like, what's the biggest challenge right now? Is there anything the audience can do to fix it? And then let's talk about like, the next 10 years, and we plan to accomplish that amazing.

Cam Wiese 32:26

Yeah, so really, the the biggest constraint right now is, is capital. Yeah. And, you know, there's a very clear vision, kind of a good breakdown plan of like, hey, how do we go about doing this? But it's finding the right people who are values aligned, who are very pro human pro progress pro like abundance, say, you know, what, like, yeah, World's Fair. Like, this would be a great thing. Like, let's go work towards it. Yeah. And so it's kind of, you know, both capital and like, founding team, gotcha. It's also like, this is going to take more than just a couple of people over zoom. It's like, how do we build kind of a coalition of people like, truly, truly believe that? Exactly. What can be better than the, like, the future can be better than the present and then, like, wants to take the World's Fairs of is available through which like, I could go help manifest that. Absolutely. And then, let's see. And then, yeah, so I mean, it's Scotland and like, obviously, like, good luck, like, I'm under no, Delusion is a massive project, right? And, like, requires lots of help. So yeah, if anyone is listening in, they're excited about like, the fair, I believe he got laid off from, you know, your startup or whatever, not meta, sorry. You know, come, come, come chat. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna be doing like events here in San Francisco, to start to like, capture the feeling of the future and the feeling of the fair. And so that's a really good way to kind of get involved and start to see like, oh, this thing is there's there's some some promise here then. Definitely. I've seen a lot. That's great.

Unknown Speaker 33:54

That's great. Well, Kim, where can people find you? Where should we send them?

Cam Wiese 33:59

So I'm on Twitter at Kim we see so ca M W IESE it's ICU see we see all the auto like Weiss and then you know, follow the World's Fair at Worlds Fair CO on Twitter and then the website World's Fair Dotco we have an amazing list and we're spinning up more of the content arm but gotcha if you're a content creator and you can feature like good please hit me up. Yeah. Yeah, so that's that's kind of the where where we're at right now.

Unknown Speaker 34:27

Good deal. Get an awesome bootcamp. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on. We'll appreciate you man. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with a new episode of narratives.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai