In addition to numerous others things, the rise of personal computers killed off the concept of World’s Fairs, at least in America. People used to descend on them by the millions to be wowed by inventions, technology and cultures they couldn’t experience in their workaday lives. But who needs to drive hundreds or thousands of miles to be awed now? What’s the sense of going anywhere to be connected to crowds of other people? It’s all possible now 24 hours a day on tiny screens in our pockets.

The final World’s Fair in the U.S. was the 1984 one in New Orleans, which declared bankruptcy. There were financial problems all along, so perhaps it would have been a boondoggle regardless. But it was also just a sign of the times, the end of an era. A 60 Minutes report about the New Orleans fiasco: