It smells like grant consultants from here. Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to get new money for digital high tech exhibits (don’t you know that’s what kids are into?) than maintaining what already exists.
I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
271–280 of 404 posts
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know about museums near you, but most museums I’ve been to internationally are free to enter and to see most of their exhibits. They’ll often have much more in their collections than what’s on display, but they’re absolutely still a public good. We also have a responsibility to preserve stuff from the past for future generations. As our ancestors have done for us.
Interesting idea of free museums. I can't think of one museum I've ever been to that did not require purchasing a ticket. Granted, in my limited travels abroad, it has been for work with no time for that kind of thing, so my experience is solely with museums in the US.
Many museums in the UK are nominally free (although they encourage a donation) and they charge for special exhibitions. A few in France are free. Can't speak to more broadly. (And, yes, free museums are pretty uncommon in the US although they exist--especially at universities, most of the Smithsonian Museums, and so forth.) Fairly broad experience even if it's often been in conjunction with work travel.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally I'm not interested in museums that are just glass cases with stuff without any explanation. I am not sure why you mentioned this, because it has nothing to do with the subject article. This was a very specific article about interactive, hands-on museums replacing their exhibits with touch screens. That being said, I have also been to countless museums of many kind and I have never once seen a museum that…
I know of one that "doesn't explain" the exhibits (except through an app/website where you match things hanging on walls with diagrams) – the Isabella Gardner museum in Boston; this is specifically due to the wishes of Isabella Gardner herself, who was opposed to plaques. There is one room that breaks this rule – I'm guessing it got damaged and then at that point they didn't have to follow her will. Still worth a vis…
I figured the Gardner was probably in this category but I haven't been there for a while and it wasn't obvious from online.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just museum exhibits and kids, it's everything . I have some maintenance roles in my background and the rate at which things like paper towel dispensers get worn down and completely destroyed when interacted with by hundreds or thousands of people a day is eye opening.
It's cus all skilled workers learned they can charge insane rates. Blue collar skilled labor starts at 100$ an hour in West Virginia or Mississippi now. Most of them, like Software, have learned that it's hard to figure out if the work they did was good or not until afterwards. As such, there are tons of charlatans, grifters, scammers, and related in many industries right now. Classic cases are Dentists (Literally ev…
After reading Chris Beasley's blog about trying to build a castle in Chattanooga (linked here on HN a while ago), I have unfortunately started to agree with this sentiment a bit.
There's too much of collective bargaining and scheming for increased prices going on in a lot of markets is what it looks like.
Hunting around for people and apparently they started texting each other stuff like "He said it was $100,000 higher than, you don't leave that money on the table."
Quotes started at $6/sq. ft, then became $6.5/sq. ft. Those people left. Became $15/sq. ft, and $23/sq. ft. It seemed like people saw a big money project, and started collectively trying to milk it for everything they could. [1]
Entire project was that way. Had thefts of a tractor, cement mixer, and small tools. Could not get people to give honest or correct bids on fencing. And 30 banks skipped on financing. Parts of the blog are depressing, yet the castle got finished, and its kind of a bleak laugh to read some of the stuff.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#275That’s why they want you to go into the office tho
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be devil's advocate it is really practical to develop and roll out digital experiences. You can be a lot more creative about it than the "big tablet" experience you have at McDonald's. Some friends of mine have built experiential art installations that have things like a custom coin-op video game, Pepper's Ghost style displays, a "time machine" experience using video projectors, etc. I'd love to be able to sell lo…
A significant number of people get motion sickness from VR and thus excluded. If you don't have a problem good for you, but please remember those of us excluded. Please leave some normal no electronics places for those of us who can't enjoy what you do.
Nobody is talking about replacing everything with VR, or anything even close to that.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be devil's advocate it is really practical to develop and roll out digital experiences. You can be a lot more creative about it than the "big tablet" experience you have at McDonald's. Some friends of mine have built experiential art installations that have things like a custom coin-op video game, Pepper's Ghost style displays, a "time machine" experience using video projectors, etc. I'd love to be able to sell lo…
If our "real world" is screens, maybe. I really hate to think that this is becoming the case, but it is happening and this only hastens it. The article was about real analogs or actual world objects. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is a fantastic example, as is the Field Museum there. Kids are full of screen time already. Is that all there is?
The Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum are both well-funded, so they better be held to a high standard :)
They also both host overnights - bring your sleeping bag and pajamas and spend the evening with tons of activities, sleeping among the exhibits, and a morning breakfast. Have done both with my kids :)
https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/events/science...
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#278Reminds me of the Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum I went to a few times as a kid. Some of my fondest memories of any museum or other similar activity are there. There were countless things to do and when I was young there were no screens to be had. I would be curious to go check it out and see if they are still following the same sort of idea or if they have fallen victim to the popularization of the screen.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#279However, the reason why your son wants to go is that they want to push buttons. And those buttons have to do things. Let a pack of children loose in a childrens' museum, and what do they? Do they run from button to button to button, pushing them, often not even waiting to see the effect.
I don't see anything intrinsically worse about having a bunch of screens do the doing rather than a handful of mechanical thingamajig that would have done the doing in the previous generation of museums. What matters is the experience.
And maybe (just a suggestion), if that's not what you want, don't take them to a science museum.
Might I suggest, a natural history museum instead, where they can personally experience row upon row of awkwardly lumpen stuffed mammals collected in the 1860s, or entire rooms full of glass cases containing "minerals" (which seemed to me, as a child, to be nothing more than a fancy word for "rock").
Personally, I have great sympathy for science museums, most of which came to be in the 1970s, back when "multimedia" was something powerfully unique and special, and have since had real challenges re-inventing themselves in a world where "multimedia" is about as impressive as a toaster. (Yes, I mean you, Ontario Science Center).
And great admiration for those curators who work hard to successfully re-invent museums in the 21st century. And respect for those curators who conduct brave experiments that sometimes fall short of expectations.
I, personally, love the Royal Ontario Museum, which managed to transform its shelves full of rocks into a curated multimedia "experience" that walks children through the geological history of the planet earth using lots of buttons to push (almost all of which control screens), and an "elevator" that "descends" 600 feet underground into the heart of a mine. And this, children, is what granite looks like! Whumpf. 4 ton granite boulder!! And I'm pretty sure that was even a shelf with a leftover hunk of carbonaceous deoderantite in there somewhere, although I am uncertain on that particular point, because I was distracted by the pure genius of a museum display consisting of a 4 ton granite boulder that children could climb on. All performed while completely resisting the urge to re-invent their "Room full of Dinosaur Bones as a Temple to Science" experience. A first-class museum experience that has withstood the test of time. And they even managed to a preserve a hall full of awkwardly lumpen stuffed mammals, which serve as a reminder to visitors that museums are constantly evolving things. A display that has a button and a screen that explains that the museum has multiple warehouses full of lumpen stuffed mammals all collected in the 1860s, all of which have to be meticulously conserved for generations of future scientists despite the 1860s awfulness of it all, and that this diorama of a stuffed caribou surrounded by a snarling pack of stuffed wolves, as stuffed groundhogs look on is a vision of what a museum should be that was enormously successful in its time.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do people not in tech go to tech conventions?
My company has a tech convention every year. Last time I went I played spot the tech person - most people there failed the test (they were former engineers now in management trying to pretend they were still technical). I'm a staff engineer and I was the lowest position person I saw there - not even senior engineers much less the low or mid level engineers that would benefit from talking to the seniors at a tech conf…
You're completely misunderstanding the purpose of a tech convention. The sport you need to play is "spot the customer".