The Great Exhibition: Facebook & Decentralized Identities in Late Modernity

Beatrice Wedd

From May to October of 1850, England hosted “The Great Exhibition” in Hyde Park, London. In the end, it was deemed a success, with over six million people attending it by the time of its closing. It was also a spectacle of culture — a museum and a multi-cultural space — and it featured impressive industrial technology that had been developed during the Victorian Era, hailing from all across the world. Recent accomplishments in railroad technology enabled these six million people to travel to the exhibition and browse the premier inventions and items their century had to offer. As the stalls within the building were arranged to feature only the “best” cultural items that each country had to display, it was the perfect opportunity to show off their innovation.

From an anthropological perspective, the space of The Great Exhibition functions as a centripetal point, at which people from the periphery meet and broaden their consciousness. From within this space, though, the mind may be carried outwards. For example, by looking at tapestries from India one could imagine the entire culture of India. In this way, the imagination is drawn towards precisely that which it cannot see: the origin of what is being represented in the exhibition. While the space itself draws bodies inward, it draws the imagination outwards. Both centripetal and centrifugal forces were therefore active, simultaneously, within the space of The Great Exhibition.