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Who Is Being Excluded by Museums' Wholesale Adoption of Digital Technology?

12 points by ohjeez 2y ago

ggm 2y ago
I dislike modern museums, compared to the dusty Victorian progenitors. I wrote to the science museum London complaining they were dumbing down and removing paths of self discovery for children walking through halls of scientific trash, by digesting them into teachable brief moments. The museum wrote back asking me to cease and desist. So I did, and the trend continues. The buggers also lost a family donation in their "raiders of the lost ark" warehouse. (Early computing parts from imperial college, possibly the 5th computer in britain) they do have an archive problem. And, a lot of science trash is kind of boring. Their real live radioactive stuff, the gear used by Watson & Crick, that's not boring. Arts et Metier in Paris is better. Lavoisiers entire gas research rig, bits of Fred Juliot-Curie's cavity accelerator magnet, the original jacquard loom, a room of 200 bizarre clockwork cog and wheel mechanisms. Or the Rutter museum in Philadelphia, or the Teylers museum in Haarlem: lethal scale Leyden jar and van de graaf generator. The real shit is much better than didactic panels and QR codes. I'm glad the deltic loco and V2 rocket are still on display in London, and Babbage bits and pieces, and the calculator made from meccano.
- bcraven 2y ago
  Whilst I agree with you as an adult, I can't help but imagine that as a child things hit differently. Particularly as a child who doesn't have such a passionate parent as yourself to explain all the equipment. As such it's hard for people like us to have an objective opinion because it's always framed through our experiences of loving science: 'It worked for us, why change it?'
  - ggm 2y ago
    I did have parents passionate about this stuff, but they also sent me off exploring on my own. So experientially this was a post in memory of past times unstructured self guided exploration. The huge risk of course is misunderstanding. Every autodidact gets hit by that. So the didactic panels are necessary, the pathways, but the sheer amount of tidying up and simplifying is (badly) stunning: they took shitloads of materials off display, to contextualise what's left better (in their eyes) Contrast with the BM. Last visit: "do you want to hold a real Celtic bronze axehead" from an archeologist on the floor. (Detectorists probably helped motivate them to socialise the stacks of finds which arent holotypes) They're bloody heavy, amazing things. Beautifully crafted Lovely chap, spoke about the casting techniques, preserving the binding in surrounding soil when removing, all kinds of stuff. I think the BM and Sir John Soanes house have kept the spirit alive, the Science Museum hasn't.
dghlsakjg 2y ago
> On an ecological level first of all, whilst digital solutions may be less energy-consuming than paper, they’re by no means energy-free. A short email sent and received on a phone produces 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), while an email with an image or attachment – for instance, a PDF ticket - produces 50 grams of CO2e, according to the great authority on carbon footprint measurement, Professor Mike Berners-Lee. Ok. I need to see the math on this, or else my phone and computer is capable of some sort of physics defying magic. I can send an email with a large attachment on my modest "homelab" a few raspberry pis in, lets be absurdly generous, 10 seconds. So 10 seconds of raspberry pi time, maxed out, 270 watt seconds (probably close to 1/10th that since it isn't maxed out). Reading it on my phone, takes a similar amount of power, realistically less. My phone is perfectly happy to charge off of 2.5 watts so lets say that receiving it takes another 10 seconds. So, being absurdly generous I'm using 295 watt-seconds. If I convert that to kWh I get 0.00008194444444 KWh. I get all my electricity from hydro, but lets say that I was down the road from a coal plant. A coal plant emits 800g CO2 per KWh. That means that the devices that I used to send and receive a large email consumed a whopping 0.06555555556 grams of CO2. I understand that there will be server farms handling my email in the real world, but those server farms are handling billions of other emails, and live and die on power costs, so I don't really think that my email is sucking down power there? Where in the world is it 50g CO2 to send an email (or 62Wh if we convert it back)? What in the world makes you think that a paper ticket, which is literally several grams of carbon and oxygen, has less of an impact? I'm willing to hear that there are people impacted by technology adoption. I'm more than willing to learn about carbon impact. But please don't put together an argument that anyone with any knowledge about the domain can see right through in a blink.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Where in the world is it 50g CO2 to send an email (or 62Wh if we convert it back)? What in the world makes you think that a paper ticket, which is literally several grams of carbon and oxygen, has less of an impact? I agree with you that the provided example is stupid, but I think there is an argument to be made that going digital can lead to more waste. Take for example digital signage. All those signs, billboards, advertisements, and more that used to be just cardstock paper in ye olde days are now bright, huge LCD screens. I don't want to be the guy signing off on the electric bill, nor consider the geopolitiecological side of where the screens came from.

12 points by ohjeez 2y ago

ggm 2y ago

I dislike modern museums, compared to the dusty Victorian progenitors. I wrote to the science museum London complaining they were dumbing down and removing paths of self discovery for children walking through halls of scientific trash, by digesting them into teachable brief moments. The museum wrote back asking me to cease and desist. So I did, and the trend continues. The buggers also lost a family donation in their "raiders of the lost ark" warehouse. (Early computing parts from imperial college, possibly the 5th computer in britain) they do have an archive problem. And, a lot of science trash is kind of boring. Their real live radioactive stuff, the gear used by Watson & Crick, that's not boring. Arts et Metier in Paris is better. Lavoisiers entire gas research rig, bits of Fred Juliot-Curie's cavity accelerator magnet, the original jacquard loom, a room of 200 bizarre clockwork cog and wheel mechanisms. Or the Rutter museum in Philadelphia, or the Teylers museum in Haarlem: lethal scale Leyden jar and van de graaf generator. The real shit is much better than didactic panels and QR codes. I'm glad the deltic loco and V2 rocket are still on display in London, and Babbage bits and pieces, and the calculator made from meccano.

bcraven 2y ago
Whilst I agree with you as an adult, I can't help but imagine that as a child things hit differently. Particularly as a child who doesn't have such a passionate parent as yourself to explain all the equipment. As such it's hard for people like us to have an objective opinion because it's always framed through our experiences of loving science: 'It worked for us, why change it?'
- ggm 2y ago
  I did have parents passionate about this stuff, but they also sent me off exploring on my own. So experientially this was a post in memory of past times unstructured self guided exploration. The huge risk of course is misunderstanding. Every autodidact gets hit by that. So the didactic panels are necessary, the pathways, but the sheer amount of tidying up and simplifying is (badly) stunning: they took shitloads of materials off display, to contextualise what's left better (in their eyes) Contrast with the BM. Last visit: "do you want to hold a real Celtic bronze axehead" from an archeologist on the floor. (Detectorists probably helped motivate them to socialise the stacks of finds which arent holotypes) They're bloody heavy, amazing things. Beautifully crafted Lovely chap, spoke about the casting techniques, preserving the binding in surrounding soil when removing, all kinds of stuff. I think the BM and Sir John Soanes house have kept the spirit alive, the Science Museum hasn't.

dghlsakjg 2y ago

> On an ecological level first of all, whilst digital solutions may be less energy-consuming than paper, they’re by no means energy-free. A short email sent and received on a phone produces 0.2 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), while an email with an image or attachment – for instance, a PDF ticket - produces 50 grams of CO2e, according to the great authority on carbon footprint measurement, Professor Mike Berners-Lee. Ok. I need to see the math on this, or else my phone and computer is capable of some sort of physics defying magic. I can send an email with a large attachment on my modest "homelab" a few raspberry pis in, lets be absurdly generous, 10 seconds. So 10 seconds of raspberry pi time, maxed out, 270 watt seconds (probably close to 1/10th that since it isn't maxed out). Reading it on my phone, takes a similar amount of power, realistically less. My phone is perfectly happy to charge off of 2.5 watts so lets say that receiving it takes another 10 seconds. So, being absurdly generous I'm using 295 watt-seconds. If I convert that to kWh I get 0.00008194444444 KWh. I get all my electricity from hydro, but lets say that I was down the road from a coal plant. A coal plant emits 800g CO2 per KWh. That means that the devices that I used to send and receive a large email consumed a whopping 0.06555555556 grams of CO2. I understand that there will be server farms handling my email in the real world, but those server farms are handling billions of other emails, and live and die on power costs, so I don't really think that my email is sucking down power there? Where in the world is it 50g CO2 to send an email (or 62Wh if we convert it back)? What in the world makes you think that a paper ticket, which is literally several grams of carbon and oxygen, has less of an impact? I'm willing to hear that there are people impacted by technology adoption. I'm more than willing to learn about carbon impact. But please don't put together an argument that anyone with any knowledge about the domain can see right through in a blink.

Dalewyn 2y ago
>Where in the world is it 50g CO2 to send an email (or 62Wh if we convert it back)? What in the world makes you think that a paper ticket, which is literally several grams of carbon and oxygen, has less of an impact? I agree with you that the provided example is stupid, but I think there is an argument to be made that going digital can lead to more waste. Take for example digital signage. All those signs, billboards, advertisements, and more that used to be just cardstock paper in ye olde days are now bright, huge LCD screens. I don't want to be the guy signing off on the electric bill, nor consider the geopolitiecological side of where the screens came from.