TechStyle

Two exhibitions at the V&A

Last week I went to two events at the V&A. The first was a launch of their Culture Online project Every Object Tells a Story developed with Channel 4 and Ultralab. The project is a good example of where the push for User Generated Content relating to museum objects was coming from back in 2002 when Culture Online was just a small Charlie Leadbetter vision for the DCMS. At that time there seemed to be two strands of thinking about what 'culture' and 'audiences' needed online - truly broadband cultural content (some of which can be seen with Stagework but more of which we'd hope to see with the development of a PSP) and User Generated Content (some which has developed elsewhere under the guise of Social Software and the BBC, but there is still very little evidence of this in the cultural sector). Its amazing how these are still the things we bleat on about.

This project goes some of the way in addressing the issues of UGC, and has explored all those critical concerns about factual accuracy, authority of museum sites, IP rights of work submitted and community creation. Its not been live long enough to develop a real sense of a growing community, and hopefully the sense of editorial control will soon be subsumed by user enthusiasm. But at the end of the day what projects such as these really have the opportunity to do is influence institutional perception about what the web is for and the strength of community collaboration.

I also popped in to the Touch Me exhibition. An exhibition about this neglected sense was nice, but some of the objects in it seemed misguided. Despite what I originally thought, the SoMo prototype mobile phones were not my cup of tea, making me laugh out loud rather than giving any sense of serious interaction design. But maybe that was there purpose - to get users to think about the way that phone are  used appropriately and inappropriately in social space. Still, electrocuting the loud user didn't seem quite fair.

Its easy to pick on small things in a exhibition, but one thing is clear. Better to be doing things, testing the water, trying things out, than not doing anything. Both of these exhibitions make me wonder at what a live and active place the V&A is at the moment, with constantly changing small, compelling and attractive exhibitions. I'm sure the Shhhh... exhibition was only last week...

Internet history

Yesterday I went to hear Katie Hafner from the NY Times talk at the LSE about the endless paternity debates for the Internet and the role of government funding in innovation. Her book written with her husband was a big influence on me when it came out in 1996, so I was interested to hear where she'd moved on to. It seems shes now interested in - among other things - Digital Preservation, but she still wants to get the facts of the Internet paternity debate right.

Hafner gave a very personal account of her interviews with the 'men of the net' such as J.C.R. Licklider (download his two most important papers here), Larry Roberts, Paul Barran, Donald Davies and Vint Cerf.  She then reitterated Len Kleinrock's hang-up that he doesn't get enough of the credit, but agreed wholeheartedly with Davies' analysis that it was a very liberal interpretation of Kleinrock's dissertation to say it was packet switching, given that it only looked at one node. I must admit I'd always assumed that Donald Davies' paper in 1967 at the ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles was one of the seminal works in the area, and the only true debate was between Davies and Barran. And as they had no problem acknowledging that they'd both tapped into the zeitgeist at the same time, then neither should we.

Later the debate moved on to whether the creation of the Internet is an enditment of capitalism (at this point you can seamlessly interchange 'Internet' with any number of recent inventions - personal computer, computer games..) Why is it that someone at every seminar on the history of technology feels the need to go there, oh these forces for good that could only possibly have come from our own entrepreneurial and democratic structures. What do people think they were doing in the USSR when they created Tetris?!

European Design

I came across the European Design Show a day too early. I had come to see WEEE man, but he'd gone on tour that morning, so I had a sunny afternoon to kill and ended up at the Design Museum. I thought I'd be interested in the web design, computer games, graphics and ceramics, but was amazed when I was more taken aback by the array of cloud and jellyfish lights that made me want to just relax in a squishy sofa and admire the view.

Then there was the blacker than black black ink from the ever inventive National Physical Laboratory. Supposedly 25 times blacker than black paint its called Super Black. Yes, black is the new black. They have come a long way since the days of the Pilot Ace computer!

Not so surprising though that I was mainly taken in by 'The technology story', with products and processes from the Belgium company Materialise. They have developed software that applys the stereolithography and sintering processes invented in the 1980s to make prototypes for the automotive and aerospace industries, to the production of everyday plastic objects. Mass production or simple craft?

Flood

Flood
Originally uploaded by TechStyle.

So this is what happens when you mix electricity with water. I always knew I loved the idea of being a pyrotechnic. At the European design show Michael Cross and Julie Mathias converted a room into a beautiful installation that had me checking whether the legs of the metal table were rubber.

Steam keenies at Ironbridge

Blists Hill wrought ironworks
Originally uploaded by TechStyle.

Blists Hill is re-enactment heaven - from a Victorian pharmacy to a replica of the Trevithick locomotive, it gives its visitors a real experience. The Victorian town at Coalbrookdale is a wonderful example of how industry and science museum volunteers preserve old skills and making themselves the life and soul of the place. We had a great day chewing inedible licorice, riding the cart and trying to explain what coal was to the kids. The moody wrought iron works were my own personal favourites, but the kids liked the Victorian kids bedroom for three.

EX-TERM-IN-ATE

I'm still recovering from the excitment of seeing my old friends with the plungers again and finding out that they go on to incorporate the DNA of Billy Piper! Oh the joy of watching the existential angst of the robots-of-fear as they become part human. And what more does a girl need on a bank holiday than to have the age old question 'how to Daleks get up stairs?' answered: EL-EV-ATE. Pure genius!

Heppellism

So they have finally lured Stephen over the water to Dublin. Like New Zealand and Thailand weren't enough. He's director of the new e-learning research centre at the National College of Ireland in Dublin. "The world needs a clearer view of how good the future might be, for learners. Cosmopolitan, global-facing, creative, wired Dublin is a perfect place to build that vision of the future. " Oh yes, and there is great sailing. 'Why didn't someone just give him Media Lab Europe' I hear you all scream??

The Original Blog

Sometimes its worth looking back to go forward. Pope and Guthrie's Hypertext Jounal , 1996, was the original blog - with a travelogue that opened up their thoughts and emotions via the WWW as they journeyed  through the Western Isles.

"... I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary or preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made..."
Boswell quotes Johnson in 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides'.

Folksonomy

Its always good when ideas come together from lots of sources. On the plane over I read Bruce Sterling's Wired article on Folksonomy. Then one of the most interesting workshops at Museum and the Web 2005 was one on 'Cataloguing by Crowd' by Susan Chun from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The idea is that you can use the network to do your keyword cataloguing through games such as ESP. It will send shudders down the spines of museum information architects, but may mean you actually end up with the keywords that people use to search.

MMW wins awards

Making the Modern World online won the 'Best of the Web' for Museums and the Web 2005 in Vancouver. We won Best Educational Use and Best Overall Museum Site. All in all the Science Museum came away from the conference looking pretty good, two awards, Mike and Dave did a great presentation on Dana Centre and I gave a paper that went down well for one of the opening session on making MMW with curators.