A museum of the future?

On our first afternoon in Dubai—roughly one lunch and three drinks after disembarking from the ship—Rick and I headed down to Dubai's Museum of the Future.

This place! It's like someone threw a shi(p)load of money at a random sci-fi novel and said, “Make it so.”

Honestly, I only wanted to go because it is, apparently, The Most Beautiful Building in the World™. Like a giant, laser-cut architectural donut that, somewhat disappointingly, does not dispense any actual doughnuts. But it is indeed beautiful.

The museum is an ode to Dubai's ambition to be the world’s premier space travel hub—or so it seems. Rick, ever the voice of reason, said that if they plan on being the main spaceport of the future, they will need much better parking.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Sundays in Muslim countries are just like Sundays the world over—a day to drag the children and grandparents out in a desperate ploy to distract them from the soul-sucking reality that Monday is stealthily creeping up, ready to ambush the last vestiges of weekend joy with its merciless, mundane routine. Well, unless you’re retired.

Hahahahaha! Suckers.

But the joke was on me because we had to stand in line for sooooo long. Turns out this is not one of those normal museums of the past where you get to walk around according to whim. Nope. This one has an agenda. And at the top of that agenda is “Stand in line for roughly 427 years.” Oy.

But we did finally make it up to the front, where we were, well, herded is the only right word here, herded into a large, dark room. We were treated to a somewhat grandiose, if pre-recorded, Star Wars-like inspirational welcome speech that addressed us as "Space Pioneers" and let us know what to expect in the next several minutes. And that was we would board a shuttle that would transport us all to the moon to help with the OSS Hope, an “orbital space station” (OSS, get it?) that powers Earth with solar space energy.

Meaning this pretty cool-looking space station would collect endless amounts of undiluted solar rays and then beam that energy in the form of "lasers"* down to terrestrial collectors positioned around the Earth, probably near large cities. That all sounded well and good until you hear that the whole thing has been engineered by SAP. Which has a success record roughly analogous to Oracle and early Microsoft. So mostly I just imagined the giant lasers blowing up every major city in the world while SAP-outfitted Space Pioneers up on the OSS Hope wailed, "Oh God, what have we done? The humanity! The humanity!” Then they would start repopulating the stars with progeny, feeding them tales of a mythical home now burnt to a giant galactic briquet.

From there, everyone proceeds through the rest of the museum one floor at a time, from the moon back down to Earth. And boy, did that take a long time.

"The most futuristic thing about this museum is the price."

–Some guy online

“A theme park for people who are too old for theme parks!”

–Some other guy online

“Giant, shiny, and expensive…full of useless gadgets and gizmos—a monument to the excesses of Dubai!”

–One last guy online

First up (or down, as the case may be), The HEAL Institute,* which is all about preserving and renewing life on Earth in the future. Somehow implying that we would, obviously, be recovering from some sort of apocalyptic disaster. There’s a section where they use AR and VR to present a “preview of a genetically modified digital Amazon Forest.” There’s just so much wrong with that sentence that I didn’t know quite what to think. Then came the Vault of Life,** a simulated DNA vault with “more than 2000 species locked in glass jars where you can see even the minute details, which otherwise are hard to see.” This display was downright beautiful, with floor-to-ceiling jars illuminated from within. It was also indisputably creepy.

The next floor was called “Al Waha,” which means “oasis” in English. Exhibits here were all about sensory experiences and therapies intended to heal the human mind and body. I wanted to spend the next seven hours on this floor, but, as fate would have it, the entire floor was literally overrun by loud, excitable children who would surge through the various areas in ululating mobs, cutting down any adult who stood in their way. So it turned out to be much less therapeutic than originally intended.

Escaping the paradoxically stress-inducing Floor of Relaxation and Grounding, we found the “Tomorrow, Today” exhibit highlighting innovative concepts and technology that offer ideas for addressing the world's most urgent challenges. This floor also “reflects the museum's work with its strategic partners as it acts as an incubator and laboratory for global foresight.” Meaning there were some really cool concept cars, including one from Audi.***

All in all, the Museum of the Future is a great place to visit if you want to see what the past thought the future would look like—yesterday’s tomorrows. Kind of like those old collectible marketing cards from the 20s and 30s.

But you know what else? That building is really something else. Dang. The whole thing is a testament to the power of robotic wizardry and algorithms. The torus-shaped building is covered in a poem about the future^† presented as windows in the shape of Arabic calligraphy.

If you don’t speak Arabic as fluently as I do, you might be wondering what is written on the Museum of the Future. Here is an English translation:

“We might not live for hundreds of years, but the products of our creativity can leave a legacy long after we are gone. The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it. The future does not wait. The future can be designed and built today.”

Needless to say, it is MUCH more lyrical in Arabic. And some things rhyme.

So, there you have it. The Museum of the Future is a blend of whimsy, wishful thinking, and wondrous technology. The building is sensational inside and out, but the museum itself was a tad boring and, ironically, primitive despite all the modern bells and whistles. I still thought seeing The Most Beautiful Building in the World was worth it.^†††