[basch]

I am very much pro World Fair revival.

But

I am also very Cold War revival. We should be launching competitive science wars with each other, not unlike the Olympics. Set objectives, set time periods, when the time and objective expire all knowledge gained is pooled and published for the world, for free. National or International propaganda campaigns to recruit for teams. Spies, espionage, moles. Not just a science fair, but something a bit more dirty and fun.

[shadowofneptune]

Slightly more seriously, something like the International Geophysical Year could be interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Geophysical_Year

[UncleOxidant]

> I am also very Cold War revival.

Complete with threats of total annihilation?

> We should be launching competitive science wars with each other

Don't we have this now with competitive global capitalism? I guess it's not the nationstate so much now as the multinational corporation, though, that are the entities competing.

I can kind of understand your wish for a Cold War revival - we certainly had more of a sense of national purpose during that period. But it was driven by fear of the other and I'm not sure that ultimately that's a good motivation.

You'd think that maybe something like a global pandemic would give us a national purpose that would have brought us together, but look what happened, just more fracturing: anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, even covid-deniers.

[basch]

I imagine Cold War 2 as a bit more contrived, self-aware, and tongue in cheek. It would need its own Geneva Convention, Oversight Committee.

I'm talking about the Space Race. There might have been some fear of space lasers and spy satellites and whatnot, but for the most part, landing on the moon was purely about pride and bragging rights, and who gets to swing a bigger stick. We need more of that, to get people excited, and to push what we can acomplish, and maybe to make us a tiny bit more reckless. Exploration can be dangerous.

I also believe, from a marketing perspective, branding it as a War and not a competition would engage people more. Football level fanaticism. People arent going to wear jerseys and cheer for a Science Fair the way they would for a Science War. I can imagine selling War Bonds to promote the Science War, with nice prizes, to engage and reward people.

[Aeolun]

> But it was driven by fear of the other and I'm not sure that ultimately that's a good motivation.

I agree that a different motivation would be better, but right now we have none, which is worse.

[zepto]

> But it was driven by fear of the other and I'm not sure that ultimately that's a good motivation.

That’s already here again. We may as well do something good with it.