i would certainly like a copy of that paper
Michele


>From: Graeme K Talboys <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Graeme K Talboys <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [GEM] Computer mediated access - part 2
>Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 16:13:58 -0000
>
>
>Thanks for the response.
>
>I shall reply to points as they came so the following will be a bit
>disjointed.
>
>The problem with the technology is that it is an expensive way of
>delivering things that can be delivered in other ways.  Certainly, text and
>pictures are better in books than on a screen which relies on expensive
>machinery and a power supply.
>
>With computers, it doesn't matter how many links there are within a given
>piece of text or graphic, they constitute an index.  You still follow a
>text-based linear path no matter how convoluted.  And it is a path limited
>by the choices made available to you.  In cyber space the world is still
>flat and although you cannot fall off the edge, there is an edge.
>
>The same is true of 'personalisation'.  You do not personalise the data
>stream, you choose from what others have made available in the form in
>which they have made it available - text and pictures, perhaps sound.
>
>As for remote/mobile engagement.  Why?  And engagement with what?  A
>computer screen embedded in a piece of technology that relies increasingly
>on microwave radiation?  The experience, especially for children, is a
>computer experience - content, as studies have shown, is largely
>irrelevant.  The important thing is that a coputer is being used because
>their use has been made to validate the process.  Not intrinsically, but
>through aggressive promotion by computer companies that use models of
>education that were outdated fifty years ago.
>
>Computers in galleries are the most absurd extension of this.  Why waste
>money and space on a piece of technology when you could display a few more
>artefacts or devise simple ways of non-mediated access to the artefacts
>that are already on display.  Computers in galleries are like worksheets,
>they draw the focus away from what is unique about museums and away from
>the experience of the museum.  They close down any chance of open enquiry
>which does not necessarily require a specific, fact-based answer or
>feedback, but which requires, instead, that the querent has the skills to
>question in ways relevant to their own situation and the confidence to
>accept that their own answers and responses are valid.
>
>You cannot teach this approach via a computer.  They can dispense
>information very well, they can pass on the facts.  But facts are often the
>least interesting things about artefacts.  It is not what you learn about
>them that is important, it is what you learn from them.  And for that you
>have to work directly with the artefact, be in its presence, experience an
>emotional and psychological connection, learn also from the response of
>others to the same artefact and explore that with those people.
>
>Children especially need to connect on a concrete level and need to be
>exposed to other aspects of museum work, the hidden curriculum, if you
>like, of the social lessons they learn.  No matter how glorious and
>technically accurate a digitally reproduction of an artefact might be,
>calling it up on a screen omits 98% of the experience.  Even if we had
>smell-o-vision, it would still be a synthetic scent (as at Jorvik).  And,
>as at Jorvik, much of what students learned had nothing to do with daily
>life in the Danish settlement.
>
>Communication and collaboration work well at a professional level with
>people who have a background outside the realm of the Internet, whose
>education and experience has been grounded in the real world.  The skills
>we use to make that communication possible come from elsewhere and the
>content of the communication is - largely - about physical reality.  But it
>is letter writing - mostly paid for by the people we/you work for.  And
>think.  What is most of it about?  Requests for snippets of information.
>If the Internet was that good, why don't those people just log on and find
>what they want by surfing the Net?  Instead, they use a quick form of
>communication to ask other people.
>
>The medium itself is not driven by users any more than the content is
>driven by users.  Users of the Internet are passive.  They look for what is
>there.  They do not demand that information they need is provided simply
>because the mechanism does not exist for that.  We must not confuse the
>ability to put a search term into an engine with the ability to get people
>to provide the information we want.  To quote - 'the medium is the
>message'.  And the medium s highly exclusive.  It is exclusive in terms of
>who has access to it and who are inclined to use it - which is, by and
>large, the same sort of people who constructed the system in the first
>place (and remember, the Internet was largely a by-product of the military
>and a need to keep a military system in communication and thus in power in
>time of social collapse).  This tends to reinforce the metaphysic on which
>it is based.  The vast majority of people on the planet don't have access
>to computer technology - they are too busy doing all the things that
>computer technology cannot do for them.  But it also excludes those who do
>have or do not want access.  These are people (especially children in
>Western society) who are fast becoming classed as stupid and as losers.  It
>also excludes those for whom computers are an irrelevance to their way of
>thinking.  And all these are people who are usually socially excluded from
>museums.  Social inclusion was supposed to be the big goal of museums.
>That will not and cannot be achieved with computers.
>
>I quite agree that computers and the Internet are not going to go away -
>too many people have too much money invested in them for that to happen.
>But we cannot alter the very way in which they work and the values that
>gave rise to them (that everything can be reduced to material terms capable
>of electronic transport) simply by tinkering with different ways of using
>programmes - themselves based on logical flows of language.  But wouldn't
>it be good for there to be somewhere in society where you can get away from
>computers and communicate without any mediation with the material culture
>bequeathed us by our ancestors?
>
>The charge that many museums are ignoring the new technology or using it
>unimaginitively is unfair.  Many have studied it closely and come to the
>decision that is simply has nothing to offer that cannot be done better in
>other ways - especially ones that involve unmediated access and
>face-to-face meetings with people.  Many other museums know that they
>cannot afford it.  Equipment and expertise, maintenance and renewal do not
>come cheaply and they take up inordinate amounts of time.  All of which
>could be better spent eslewhere.  And as for those that have only put up
>their openeing times and opened access to their records, have probably done
>as much as they can afford and as much as most people actually want of
>them.
>
>As for disabled access...  I am disabled and I refuse to be tidied away and
>drip-fed a watery version of 'culture' through my computer screen.  It is
>patronising in the extreme.  Before I became disabled, and indeed before I
>even worked in museums, I was involved with disabled people and issues of
>access.  What the majority of disabled people want is to be able to go out
>and be part of the world - not ever more isolated from it.  Yes, computers
>might help, but all too often that is taken to mean that the problem is
>solved.  Besides which, disabled people are amongst the poorest in the
>country.  What money they do manage to prise out of the grasp of the
>government isn't enough to cover the cost of computers and Internet access
>(and, no, it isn't cheap if your only income consists of disability
>benefits and your outgoings are higher than an able bodied person).
>
>There is a wider issue of access, be you disabled or just living in a
>remote area (and I have the happy chance of both).  And it is not going to
>be solved by computers.  Culture involves people and their interaction and
>the manifestation of their beliefs and philosophies in terms of the
>material and non-material.  Access to this cannot be left in the hands of
>whoever controls the computer network.
>
>An exchange of views via the Internet is all well and good, but where does
>it take us?  It is a talking shop restricted to those who have access.  How
>many museums have such a facility open to the general public?  How often do
>the staff of those museums engage in conversation with the public?  What
>are the topics?  Have changes resulted from them in the museums involved or
>to their websites?  These are things I would be interested to know.
>
>Far all that, the GEM list is not actually representative of what the
>Internet is or what it could be.  Discussions are e-mails and could exist
>independently of the rest of the content of the Net.  Once computers are
>used to mediate access to museums we still have the fundamental problems of
>the cultural hegemony on which computers are based to deal with, as well as
>the reduction of education to the mere passing on of information.  Museums
>should, I believe, actually be working in the opposite direction to this
>reductionism.
>
>I am exploring some of these arguments in greater depth.  If anyone wants
>to see a copy of the first draft, let me know your e-address and I'll send
>it as an attachment.
>
>Graeme K Talboys
>
>


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp