…to the Century 21 Exposition, better known as the 1961 Seattle World’s Fair. So much has been written, some of it at this site, about the fair as the city’s official coming-out party, the event that put the town on the proverbial map and kick-started its fine-arts scene, whilst leaving a “permanent legacy” in the Seattle Center complex.

Less frequently mentioned is the fair’s most important and most forgotten legacy, its utopian attitude.

The fair occurred in the days before the ’60s assassinations, during the . The Vietnam war was still a small-scale police action. The civil rights movement had started to make waves. The new science of contraception promised to eradicate overpopulation and associated sufferings. Western Europe had finally recovered from WWII’s aftermath. America had two spankin’-new states to welcome into its civic bosom. Peace and prosperity seemed like true possibilities at the peak of JFK’s “Camelot” era.

More important locally, it was the dawn of jet travel. The world had grown hours or even days closer. Beyond that, the whole of outer space awaited our exploration.

In this milieu of memes, the fair’s buildings and exhibitors promised a great big beautiful tomorrow.

It doesn’t matter that the fair’s specific predictions about lifestyles and technologies didn’t come to pass. (Domed cities, nuclear-powered everything, etc.) For that matter, they didn’t predict women in corporate management or the Internet.

What matters is that, eight years into the century prophesied at the fair, we’ve lost that confident progressive spirit.

Now, some of us are trying to bring back that forward-looking spirit. This group includes those who’ve coalesced around a guy who was still in diapers when the fair opened.