Exhibition in Osaka: a wooden ring instead of a glass ball

Osaka pelvis | Video presentation in the South Korean pavilion is projected on all walls, she tells the story of the girl in 2040 after the death of her grandfather, she arouses the melody – thanks to artificial intelligence. Welcome to the exhibition of 2025, the world exhibition in Osaka in Japanese.

Also, two of the eight branded pavilions with which Japan accepts, puts its official vision, we are talking about artificial intelligence, which will become a daily way of life in the future. For example, the story of a grandmother who does not want to die, but still wants to spend time with her granddaughter, and wonders how it will be if she becomes and lives like Android. She asks Zen Monk for advice whether this is really a “life” and gets a significant answer: “You will not come closer to him.”

These large future designs not only resemble visions of various technological innovative communities of the Silicon Valley. At the same time, you also raise questions: is this a utopia that we all strive for? Is it advisable to align the action in the present?

However, there are other imaginations at the 2025 exhibition. He crosses smaller future stories that are poets in their own life. As in the inconspicuous “future village of life” on the edge of the site, in which initiatives from Japan represent their approaches to a better, stable life in several small pavilions.

Instead of the main visions of artificial intelligence, these are very specific projects that concern this issue, for example, in aging and concentrated country concentrated in the capital’s areas, young people can be motivated in small cities in the future. Or we are talking about the creation of the “Educational Center for the Reducing of Natural Disasters” after a large earthquake of Kobe in 1995 and how to transfer the experience gained to other regions in order to be able to better cope with future natural events.

By the way, it also becomes noticeable that the potential of AI can be larger in communicative applications, such as automatic synchronization of discussions practiced at the exhibition, thanks to which language barriers are possible.

But you should not just put large and small future designs against each other. Both are especially important because they give orientation to what we do in the present. In turn, they make a certain future more often than others. This is in private – how do you imagine your own life in ten years? – As in the social area: what society, in which we live in 20, 30 or 100 years?

The world exhibition works as a barometer for the mood of large future designs. Future productions of various countries, as well as EXPO 2025 are representative: it is located on an artificially created island, where its place is in wooden construction, about 20 meters high in historical construction. This resembles a spreading circular headquarters from Apple.

In addition to Japanese proprietary pavilions, the ring also includes approximately 160 involved countries, divided into subject areas, “connecting life”, “expanding the possibilities of life” and “salvation of life”. Where the pavilions are more than tourism, industrial and political advertising, the image of a society stated at the beginning dominates: it solves current problems with AI technologies and, therefore, not only more suitable for life, but also more environmental.

It should be noted that the German pavilion of all things offers a great imagination of a stable future, not only wants to reflect the technology or only regulate, as is often the case in Germany, if a digital future is decided. The name of the pavilion is “wa!”, Which can be written in Japanese with three different characters and can simultaneously mean “circulation”, “harmony” and “wow”.

In addition to winking, there is German cuisine, among other things, as a brutura on small wooden barbecue, the national flag dissolves in the leap that stand behind a circular economy, and the pavilion itself consists of several round wooden houses that can regenerate. Inside the audio guide presents projects from a circular economy. This is formulated by the introduction to the pavilion, in which visitors’ groups together visualize their future imagination of a stable city – and the completed immersion projection, calling for their own actions.

The German pavilion in Osaka in two ways shows why we also need great future imaginations. It shows how small individual projects can unite for the exciting utopia of the future society and why it is desirable. At the same time, however, he made it clear that the last government also failed: namely, to be able to report such a positive idea about the future and this departure in his own country.

In these various approaches, Expo 2025 reveals a special potential: solutions for individual problems of the present become tangible, small and large visions together provide orientation for the life of the future. Only if this exists, can collective actions, a general change.

Such collective future ideas are not just coloring together a pleasant time. Financial and structural decisions are often justified at present with specific ideas about the future, in business and politics: if you are taking a team from the future, which is characterized by military conflicts, other decisions are made than if you see the upcoming stable, peaceful society. Large visions become central to small projects, especially because they determine financial decisions. And that is why it is important that we also think about our digital future. Osaka may be the beginning for this.