Roads, as we know them today, are common necessities. These manicured paths we traverse day-in and day-out have become public infrastructure that allow societies and culture to grow and thrive throughout the world.
While trade routes and migratory paths existed as early as 5000 BC, the Romans are credited for dramatically improving road technology. In order to move armies quickly and efficiently in their conquest of the known world, Roman roads were made from deep beds of layered crushed stone to ensure smooth and dry wheeled chariot travel.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Roads now guide us as we travel around the world. It’s become second nature for us. Roads lead us to knowledge institutions like museums and libraries. They lead us to business ventures and recreational activities alike. Their benefits are analogous to a real-world internet that facilitates analog connections between people and places. Roads, alongside the advent paper, have perhaps done more to support the democratization and dissemination of ideas throughout physical space than any other technological development in history.
In a practical sense, roads are awesome. We wouldn’t be where we are as a global culture without them. Metaphorically, however, and in the context of the modern technology landscape, I think the concept a road or a predetermined path that connects point A and point B deserves some examination.
Computer scientist Bran Ferren is noted for saying:
Technology is the stuff that doesn’t work yet.
I love this quote. Scaling Ferren’s thesis out a bit, we can infer that technologists are the beating hearts that take the stuff that doesn’t work yet to a place of functional distinction. Through passion, obsession and an inherent need to make, technologists dedicate their lives to building things that impact our lives. Software and hardware often get the glory, but let us not forget that human spirit and ingenuity have tread the ground leading to these palaces of pixels.
As Ferren’s quote implies, the most compelling technology projects solve new problems, often in surprising and exquisitely considered ways. Creative technologists regularly need to be transported to a place existing roads won’t take them.
When it comes to true innovation, there is no city grid. Google Maps won’t help you. Macadam turns to asphalt turns to gravel turns to dirt turns to lush old growth. Instead of following existing roadmaps, we are required to forge new paths. We reverse engineer our future. And as our feet fall from common trails, we press our soles into the new fresh earth. Quicksand and jagger bushes be damned.
Turn off your GPS. Disable location services. Carry a machete. Take a step. Then take another. And then one more.
The internet is intentionally pervasive. His far-reaching tentacles evolved through Darwinian-like design. The internet is also persistent. He is ubiquitous, pwned by no one. He is everywhere. All the time.
The network will not apologize. The network is proud of this persistence. This ubiquity. He’s earned it.
These traits are what make the web beautiful. By and large, they’re why pixel workers like us do what we do, day in, day out. We carry meaning forward through ones and zeros to communities at scale. Seven billion potential participants interacting with the things we make. All the world’s knowledge, democratized and in our pockets.
But in the face of all the internet’s promise and charm, do you ever dream about giving it all up? Walking away for good? Finally and forever, severing the digital tether?
I do.
Every single day.
Some people dream about winning the lottery. Putting cash money in the bank. Others long for a perpetual vacation on a tropical island. Sand between their toes. An umbrella delicately placed in their cocktail.
Not me.
I daydream of awkward silences and unbroken eye contact. I dream of focus and undivided attention. My thoughts fix on being unreachable and independent, and fully in the moment with the people I’m with.
However, the network commands constant attention. He pings, we check.
I want less real-time, more real time. I want to be here. Right now.
I want to make things with my hands, things that last and have a tactile presence in the world. Things with physicality. Things that take up space. Does it ever bother you that so much of what we labor so hard to make in the digital space is so fleeting, swept away like sand under the waves of browser updates, new operating systems, and software versioning?
The network is proud of this progression and is unforgiving. As he consumes his previous self to sustain his future iterations, we’re left with one choice: Jump on or get left behind run over.
Sometimes I dream of letting go and allowing him to crush me under the weight of his pixels.
In this fantasy, I’m standing still and alone in a swirling digital vortex. I am in the eye and I am calm. Around me swirls the madness of our omnipresent digital fabric. Hexidecimals, source code, selfies, ping, emoji, uploads, likes, ping, navigation menus, status updates, browser widths, ping, downloads, emails, WiFi connections, analytics, ping, retina screens, ping, that goddamn watch, ping, tweets, git push, ping. Faster, louder, swirling all around my still frame. Eyes closed, teeth clenched. Faster, louder. I am still. Swirling. Dizzy. Disorienting. I am still. Ballooning with every rotation until one final pixelated, glitchy gasp.
Ping.
And there I stand. Still. Calm. Enveloped in silence. I am alone in the quiet calm of the disconnected dawn. No longer a statue. No longer paralyzed by persistence, I take a step.
I’ve been so busy at work and home that I completely forgot to post about a cool project we shipped at the museum last week. We hacked an Amiga 1000 and are letting visitors use it to explore some of Warhol’s digital experiments created with the device in the 1980s.
Me, over on the museum blog:
The shell and innards have been modified to allow for constant, ongoing usage, but all the 1980s details remain. The mouse is jumpy and doesn’t track tightly, and the files open much slower than we’re accustomed to these days, but the authenticity of the operating experience goes a long way in conveying the blunt, primitive nature of the digital tools available for artists at the time.
Earlier this week at work, we published (and effectively open-sourced) a digital strategy that will guide us for the next several years. I wrote about it on the museum’s blog and if you’re into this kind of nerdy stuff, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Shortly after we made the strategy public, I stumbled upon a tweet by the brilliant Seb Chan:
I get sad when museums talk about all their stuff as ‘content’. — Seb Chan (@sebchan) March 31, 2015
I’ve never liked the word ‘content’ and I always feel a bit icky when I hear marketers fling it about. Seb is completely right. The word doesn’t do museum missions justice and it cheapens the integrity of our subject matter. Sure enough though, there it was littered throughout sections of our strategy used to describe the museum’s varied objects and narratives.
Since the strategy was open-sourced on Github, I promptly filed an issue ticket and started discussing language alterations with my team. Everyone agreed that an edit was appropriate. A few minutes later, I pushed an update to the repo. We now refer to our objects, media and ephemera with more meaningful language.
This is a really great example of how operating openly and transparently can positively impact institutional philosophy. This minor modification made our approach much stronger. I hope we push more changes like this in the future and when I look back on the versioned repo a few years from now, I’ll be able to see a comprehensive record of how our approach evolved over time.
When Jilly and I were considering a move to Pittsburgh in the winter of 2001, we came into town for the day to explore the city and its many amenities. The first place we went on that fateful day nearly 15 years ago was the Andy Warhol Museum.
I’ll never forget my first experience there. Seeing the work first-hand was of course amazing, but more than that I found the artistic narrative and the immersive environments created by the institution to be truly impactful. To me, the museum breathes cool. It feels fresh and somewhat elusive (like Warhol himself). From that first moment I was hooked on the ethos of the place.
That initial visit to the Warhol Museum was a big part of our decision to reside nearby on the city’s North Side. It was also an inspirational keystone for me to focus my professional work on the intersection of art + technology.
My personal relationship with the museum developed over the years through countless exhibitions, concerts and one photo-booth wedding announcement. Today I’m happy to report my professional relationship with the museum is just beginning.
On November 3rd, I will join the team at the Andy Warhol Museum to lead digital engagement efforts and help continue the great work already being done there. The museum is lucky to have a great foundation, built by extremely smart and capable predecessors. I am beyond excited to dive into this dynamic institution, learn as much as I can and begin work on some truly remarkable initiatives.
It’s strange, but in a way, it feels like I’m returning home.
I got my first taste of publishing to the web in November 1996. I was a first-semester undergrad, still wet behind the ears. It was a life-altering experience.
For the life of me I can’t remember the URL of that first Geocities node. A damn shame though, because if I had it today, I would Wayback Machine the hell out of that little turd pile of HTML. Alas, that first URL is a victim of my memory and the site is off somewhere lost in the binary.
The ability to craft feeling and emotion from pixels was seductive to me as a teenager. Still is. Learning how a seemingly random string of unicode text could output color and aesthetic became my obsession. My first sites were an exploration in markup and imagery. In retrospect, they were not good – hideous in fact – but the idea that I could upload openly to a server that could be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, anywhere in the world, blew my mind.
I began publishing my writing online shortly after I figured out the nuts, bolts and protocol of the web. Blogs weren’t a thing yet, so inline styles served as post formatting and table wrappers made the sidebar. A new post meant appending the top of the journal.html file with some new, often idealistic, text. Much simpler days.
Shortly after my first foray into online journaling, a virtual tag cloud’s worth of blogging platforms emerged. Millions of people (myself included) entered the world of platform-based reverse chronology and the big business of blogs was subsequently born. By 2004, blogs were all the rage and a personal URL was the social accessory of choice. Independent weblogs enjoyed their time in the sun for a hot second before something happened.
Facebook happened. Twitter happened. And then the social dominos started falling until they covered over independent websites. Now when someone publishes, they tweet. Or post on Facebook. Or publish an essay on Medium.
So why, if it’s become so easy to publish via 3rd party services, do I and others like me continue to publish sites like these, on unique URLs, free-standing in their platform-agnostic glory? It’s simple really. We subscribe to the Craft Indie philosophy, meaning we take extreme pride and are borderline-obsessed with hand-crafting our own little corners of the web.
Craft Indie is calculated indie. Laborious indie. Tie-your-brain-in-a-knot indie. No easier than it’s ever been. I’m talking about breathing your bits — really possessing, sculpting, caressing, caring for, caring after your bits. Knowing. Takes buckets of effort. And buckets be heavy…Craft Indie is lose your afternoon to RSS 2.0 vs Atom specifications indie. Craft Indie is .htaccessing the perfect URL indie. Craft Indie is cool your eyes don’t change indie. Craft Indie is pixel tweaking line-heights, margins, padding … of the copyright in the footer indie. Craft Indie is #efefe7 not #efefef indie. Craft Indie is fatiguing indie, you-gotta-love-it indie, you-gotta-get-off-on-this-mania indie.
Outside of our obsessive-compulsive code tweaking, independent websites remain extremely important for reasons of sustainability, portability and legacy. Relying on dedicated platforms to support the carrying of messages places the majority of power in the camp of the platform, not the publisher. Brent Simmonds writes:
My blog’s older than Twitter and Facebook, and it will outlive them. It has seen Flickr explode and then fade. It’s seen Google Wave and Google Reader come and go, and it’ll still be here as Google Plus fades. When Medium and Tumblr are gone, my blog will be here.
Using 3rd party services is great, however I’m more interested in using them to share content than publish content. This is a subtle, but all-to-important difference. In recent years web publishing has become consolidated and homogeneous. We rely on too few platforms as the pillars of this web we love. We need more distribution. We need refragmentation.
Frank Chimero explores this concept in a recent essay:
The lack of an tag led to Pinterest. No method to connect people created Facebook. RSS’s confusing interfaces contributed to Twitter’s success. Any gargantuan web company’s core value is a response to limitations of the protocol (connection), markup spec (description), or browsers (interface). Without proper connective tissue, consolidation becomes necessary to address these unmet needs. That, of course, leads to too much power in too few places. The door opens to potential exploitation, invasive surveillance, and a fragility that undermines the entire ethos of the internet.
So how do we stimulate a refragmentation of the web that isn’t just usable, but more useable than Twitter or Facebook or Pinterest? How can we achieve the dream of tech companies becoming field research that informs the underlying protocol Chimero proposes in the closing to his wonderful post? I don’t have the answer and I’m not sure a definitive one currently exists. But I believe we’ll get there.
Until then, you know where to find me. I’ll be here in perpetuity tweaking my margins, fine-tuning my palette and publishing my pipe dreams long into the digital dawn…Craft Indie-style.
In a recent article for Quartz entitled How Technology Can Make Better Fathers, Alexandra Svokos takes a surprising look at how the proliferation of digital technologies is impacting the way fathers connect with their kids.
Structured mainly through the lens of her own experiences growing up with a traveling father, Svokos' argument asserts that instant messaging and web-enabled mobile devices make a positive impact on a non-present father’s relationship with his children. These technologies are not meant to replace in-person experiences, she says, but rather increase the “overall volume of contact.”
The most important factors of distanced communication are immediacy, regularity, and reciprocity. Fathers don’t have to maintain an exhaustive phone schedule to keep up a relationship with their children; they just have to show up, and do so regularly. Because my dad took the time to send pictures and messages, I knew he still cared about me, no matter how far from home he was at any given time. A pixilated picture with a one-sentence description was often enough.
Svokos certainly has a right to her point-of-view and her thought-provoking article has given me much to think about.
I spent a large portion of this summer traveling for work, away from my family for weeks at a time. From a non-present father’s perspective, I’m not sure I agree with the thesis put forward by Svokos. No matter how many text messages we send or video calls we make to our kids when we’re away, they still know we’re absent. Not only are we absent, but we are absent by choice in their eyes.
My kids struggled through our time apart. They found it difficult to understand why Daddy wasn’t at the soccer games or cuddled up at bedtime to read them a story. No heightened level of technology could replace my absence.
I believe in the promise of technology and think it is our best tool to solve some of the world’s most important problems. I also believe technology can help us be better fathers, but it falls very short when it attempts to act as a replacement for physical presence.
I’ve been sending emails to both of my children since before they were born, however these notes don’t aim to chronicle things I’m experiencing while alone. They are a record of the things we experience together. One day, when my kids are old enough to have an email account, I’ll give them the keys to unlock a decade or so of memories we made with each other.
My son just turned seven and he gets excited by technology. You know, the whole Minecraft phenomenon. He’s very curious about how software is made and has expressed interest in learning how to code. I look forward to spending some time, just the two of us (and Macbook makes three), hacking together his first website or mobile application.
Both of these examples are, in my opinion, two distinct ways the digital world can help me be a better father.
Parenthood is predicated on presence. Technology should help bring mothers and fathers together with their children, not failingly attempt to mask the fact that we’re apart.
Earlier this week, my team at work announced a large-scale project that will consume a large portion of my professional life over the next few years. Art Tracks: The Provenance Visualization Project is a facinating concept and an opportunity to make a valuable contribution to the museum sector.
The TL;DR version of the announcement post:
The Digital Media Lab at Carnegie Museum of Art is attempting to structure provenance and exhibition history data so curators, scholars, and software developers can create dynamic visualizations that answer impossible questions—and we’ve assembled a talented team to do it.
Since announcing the project, several people have asked what we mean when we say “impossible questions.” In our minds, the impossible questions are the questions we’d love to have answers for, but currently don’t have the ability to calculate. Or if we could manually calculate answers, the available data won’t allow us to compute at scale.
Some examples of impossible questions we’re challenging ourselves with include:
Which objects currently in the museum’s collection were in New York for the 1913 Armory Show?
What items in the museum’s collection were located in England during WWII?
What percentage of our collection has been on loan at least once in the past 20 years?
What areas of the world have the permanent collection never been on loan to? What are the prohibitive reasons (geographical, political, etc.)?
Where, on a map, is every item in the permanent collection located today?
What group of works belonged to a particular nationality of collectors at a particular time and/or in a specific place?
Which artwork in the museum’s collection has logged the most “miles” since creation?
These are just some of the things we’re considering as we explore this concept of impossible questions. We’ve only been working on Art Tracks for a month, but we’re already realizing that when you begin to connect an art object with its entities (artist, owner, exhibitior) over time and place, there is enormous potential for arriving at impossible answers.
I recently wrote about the first leg of a European trip, which found me and a team of colleagues working and exploring Geneva and its neighboring French countryside. For the second leg of the trip, we hopped on an EasyJet and flew over to Berlin to spend a few days filming a series of interviews with Joachim Schmid.
We worked the majority of the time we were in Berlin, but I was able to escape one morning and spend a few hours exploring this beautiful city. My entire photoset is up over on Flickr, but here are a few of my favorites.
I was initially suprised at how green and infused with nature Berlin was. For some reason, my notions of the city had been industrial, rigid and grey. I couldn’t have been more wrong with my assumptions.
Our hotel was in the Tiergarten neighborhood, which holds a huge urban park of the same name. It reminded me much of New York’s Central Park, but bigger and with more secluded pathways. During my morning walk through Tiergarten, the sunlight was piercing through the tall trees, creating laser beems of light all around me. It was beautiful.
On the other side of Tiergarten, I emerged in Mitte, the city center, at the foot of the Brandenburg Gate. I must say I was caught somewhat off guard by its lurking enormity, just adjacent to the tranquil Tiergarten.
Just through the Brandenburg Gate is Pariser Platz. It was certainly beautiful, but I was struck by the commercialization of the square. Just out of view, to the right of the frame, is a Starbucks and a retail train of tacky souvenir shops.
From there, I continued on to Museum Island. Kind of strange for a museum guy, but I didn’t visit a museum. Not enough time.
Walking back through Tiergarten, this discarded poster caught my eye. Having just spent several days interviewing Joachim about his work with found photography, I was compelled to document this find. Translation: Money for Grandma.
In the neighborhood surrounding our hotel, an artist is leaving bronze placemarkers at the residence locations of Jews who were removed from their homes during the Holocaust. As you walk the streets, you see these little memorials outside the doors of many buildings. I’d love to know who the artist is. If anyone has information, please leave it in the comments below.
I couldn’t leave Germany without taking in some of the tasty brew! Luckily, there was a fantastic Biergarten about a block from our hotel. I’m not sure which was better at this place, the beer or the food. Highly recommended if you’re in the neighborhood.
I’ve spent the past few weeks traveling around Europe for work. While that may sound super glamorous and exciting, it really wasn’t. We worked nearly around the clock and that left very little time for exploring or sight-seeing. On a few occasions, however, we did manage to put down the work for some quality extracurricular experiences.
The first leg of our trip brought us to Geneva, Switzerland. The city itself was so picturesque. Almost too clean. You can definitely see it’s been a country that’s kept itself out of conflicts and military altercations.
Lake Geneva was simply breathtaking. Nestled up right next to the historic city center of Geneva, it provides an amazing juxtoposition to the jagged Alps that lurk out into the distance.
Our official business in Geneva brought us to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Being a technologist, this was almost like making a religious pilgrimage. My mind was blown so many times during our time at CERN, I acually lost count. Here is a record of some of the most mind-blowingest moments:
We got to go 300 meters underground to film inside the ATLAS Detector.
An iPhone panorama shot from the observation deck inside ATLAS. It’s hard to see from these photos the enormity of this machine. It’s essentially the world’s largest camera.
The CERN Fire Brigade escorted us to the top of this water tower – the tallest point on the property – so we could get some arial/landscape shots. Only two people could fit in the elevator to the top, so we had to make several trips with the crew and equipment.
The view from up top was breathtaking. To the left is CERN, and to the right? Yep, that’s the French countryside. What’s that in the distant middle? Oh, just Mont Blanc, the tallest point in the European Union.
CERN is also the place where, in 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. I couldn’t leave this place without geeking out a bit. We got to see one of the world’s first two web servers. It’s just a NeXT desktop, but to think of the ripple effect this single machine caused is awe inspiring. We also got to see the office in which Berners-Lee worked on the project. Apparently his web project was described early on as “vague, but exciting.” Amazing.
Even though our work was in Switzerland, our hotel was just across the border in France. We got a tip one night from a local that there was going to be a Bastile Day party in the neighboring town of Ferney-Voltaire. Turns out, the party was taking place on the lawn at what was once Voltaire’s chateau! There was music, food, bocci and fireworks. A really great evening.
Jilly and I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days in Paris. One of the things we love to do together in a new city is set out early to walk, eat and drink our way through the unfamiliar streets. We usually tackle a different direction or neighborhood each day. This approach allows us to get a feel for the local culture and discover the pockets of communities that give a city its life. It’s amazing how quickly the streets become more familiar.
This recent trip to Paris was particularly wonderful. We were celebrating our ten-year wedding anniversary, the weather was perfect and some good friends from London made the trip across the channel to hang out for a bit.
I kept my camera close the whole time, and these are a few of my favorite shots from the trip.
A morning view of Cité, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance.
The Louvre was too crowded to enjoy or spend any quality time with the collection. This image captures that sentiment well. We saw the Mona Lisa because we felt we needed to, then promptly left to check out some other museums.
I didn’t realize how massive the Eiffel Tower was until we were underneath it. I mean, I knew it was big, but for some reason I was surprised by its delicate enormity.
I love this alley for some reason. It was super quiet and lovely. So Parisian.
The street art was great. Interesting stuff everywhere. I spotted these octopus pieces in a few neighborhoods throughout town. Anyone know who the artist is?
By chance, we stumbled upon 59 Rivoli, an amazing artist residence/squat in the beautiful neighborhood of Le Marais. There were so many great and friendly artists working when we stopped by. Reminded me a bit of the Mattress Factory.
A portable art gallery on the street of Montmartre. What a great part of town. It was quite a hike (we walked the whole way!), but well worth it.
And the Sacré Coeur! So beautiful. Quite a reward for making it all the way to the top.
The entire set of images is up over on Flickr. As usual, everything is CC BY-NC-SA.
There have been several articles published in recent weeks assaulting the role technology has grown to encompass with respect to art museum visitor experiences. All of these pieces take a similar tack: mobile devices distract us from thoughtful looking; visitor photography of artworks does nothing to improve memory; when it comes to museum tech, less is more; something something the sky is falling.
These articles all share a nostalgia for and vehement defense of “the museum experience.” They propose that museums are supposed to be quiet contemplative spaces where people can reflect and intellectualize around objects without distraction or interruption from the outside world. Anything deviating from this scenario is inherently negative. While this may be true for some, it is undoubtedly not the case for others.
The fundamental flaw with these arguments is that they make the false assumption that a singular, one-size-fits-all museum experience ever existed in the first place. Considering that there is, and has been, only one correct way to experience a museum is extremely narrow-minded, experientially short-sighted and ultimately antiquated.
I would argue there is no such thing as “the museum experience.”
Perhaps now more than ever (thanks in part to technology), we are in a position to craft meaningful experiences for a wide array of museum-goers and open up these experiences to those who might never set foot inside our institutions. We can certainly honor traditionalists with minimalist thoughtful looking, but we should also provide the tools, access to information and social interactions that allows the born-digital generation to have relevant and meaningful experiences. I like to think of this approach as employing technology that disappears.
I also wonder if this issue is particularly time- or era-sensitive. In episode 11 of Museopunks, Beck Tench said something I feel is pertinent to this discussion:
We are living in two worlds now. The thing our grandchildren will find most quaint about us is that our generation makes a distinction between the physical and the virtual.
Because we’re living in this unique and transitional time, our task as museum technologists is complicated. We need to offer a multiplicity of experiences along an extended spectrum of digital comfort levels. If we don’t, our future constituents will move on, leaving museums behind for experiences that are more relevant and impactful for them. It is possible to honor the past while embracing the future, but it takes institutional open-mindedness and a willingness to acknowledge that, as visitors, we all need different things from our museums.
In preparing for our Museopunks @ MCN sessions, Suse and I have stumbled upon an area of investigation I think warrants some real thought. After discussing it briefly in a conference session brainstorming call, my mind has been racing ever since. Our conversation centered around the concept of digital citizenship, particularly if (and how) museums should be actively participating in a greater societal discourse and digital dialog. Should we — and by “we” I mean our institutions — be working to become better digital citizens?
Citizenship is traditionally thought to be an individual ideal, one that people take pride in possessing. Digital citizenship, albeit a new concept, also grips onto elements of individualism. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Anonymous hackers are likely the most famous digital citizens in recent memory, and although they definitely skew political, they jump to the front of my mind when thinking about citizenship in the digital capacity.
Notable activists aside, there is much more to digital citizenship than activisim. In fact, DigitalCitizenship.net cites nine individual elements of digital citizenship: access, commerce, communication, literacy, etiquette, law, rights & responsibilities, health & wellness, and security (self protection).
Could museum interactive experiences not only provide access to rich content, but also help increase the overall digital literacy of users?
Might we design our technology initiatives with an eye toward vision health or mitigating repetitive stress syndrome?
Why shouldn’t our digital projects travel parallel paths in pursuit of both curatorial mission and digital good?
Thinking about digital citizenship in these terms convinces me that institutions — museums in particular — are doing well, but could be doing better. Access is certainly important, and it seems to be the focus of most digital efforts. While opening up content, publishing collection data and releasing open-source digital resources are all important, so are actively pursuing the other eight elements outlined above.
We’re still solidifying the themes of the three (!!) Museopunks @ MCN sessions, but I hope this topic makes the cut. There’s a lot to unpack here and I’m looking forward to diving deep on this with some smart people.
What do you think? Is it possible for cultural institutions to transcend the singular ideal of citizenship and play a larger role in digital society? If so, what are some ways museums can become better digital citizens?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on some pretty intense projects at work in anticipation of big exhibition opening this weekend. One of the projects shipped today and I’m extremely proud of the work my team did to bring this concept from a loose idea to a delightfully useable thing.
The CMOA companion app is loaded with some interesting features, but my favorite one is likely the simplest. While visiting museums, I’ve often wished I had a bookmarklet or a “Read Later” service through which I could revisit and deep-dive on the works I personally enjoyed in the gallery. I regularly want to know more about a work or artist, but don’t want the multimedia/technology/screen viewing to penetrate into my gallery experience. Sometimes I just want to enjoy the art, you know? Color me a purist.
A few weeks ago I was talking to a colleague about this idea and he matter-of-factly said, “Why don’t you just write bookmarking functionality into the app?” And like that, we did. It’s a simple idea, but I think it’s going to be the feature people find the most delightful.
Throughout the development of the CMOA companion app, I realized we were making conscious decisions to omit sexy functionality in favor of truly useable and helpful features. This meant we often pushed the technology to the background, making it a vehicle or an agent instead of a focus point.
I find technology that disappears or recedes into the background — only to reveal itself when called upon — to be some of the most interesting work currently happening in the museum context. There is certainly a well-deserved place for multitouch/kiosk/fixture interactive experiences and focal-point tech in the museum world, but there is also a growing appetite for light-weight, understated, personality-infused gems. I hope those who are hungry for this type of experience find value in projects like the one we just shipped.
I turn 35 today. As a birthday present to myself, I’m currently on a plane headed far away for some much needed downtime. In the coming days I will live completely off the grid. I will read books made from paper and I will avoid glowing screens. I might even try to make something with my hands. Don’t call, don’t email and don’t tweet. I won’t hear you.
Let’s reconnect on the other side, yes? Yes. Over and out.
Over the course of the past six decades, technologists have been building the perfect television. Black-and-white and vacuum tubes have evolved into internet-enabled and on-board CPUs. Pixel density is high, profile depth is low and HDMI connections flow with zero latency. Colors are bright and surround sound systems throw down some mean bass. We control these perfect televisions from remote locations via mobile devices and we live our lives unconfined to program schedules.
But for all the effort we’ve placed on building the perfect television, we have very little to show for it with respect to viewing experience. From network broadcasting to subscription cable to online streaming services, there are hundreds of content channels/streams available to us. Perfect televisions deliver unending content yet nothing is worth watching. We’ve iterated on the infrastructure to such a heightened level, the experience of watching television has fallen off the radar and remains virtually unchanged from its inception in the 1950s.
A compelling experience – one that keeps up with the technological advancements of the infrastructure – has not been designed for us.
In a way, I think this is also where we are with respect to museum technology. Koven’s thoughts fall into perspective when we consider content management systems, collections databases and institutional strategy as infrastructure (the perfect televisions) that can be not only built upon, but designed upon in interesting ways. We can see these elements of experience design taking shape in some of the projects Koven notes in his brief, thought-provoking post.
Innovation is nothing new. Museum technologists, like their counterparts working within other types of organizations, have been innovating for decades. It’s exciting, though, to think we may be in the midst of #MuseTech version 2.0, where institutions can stand tall upon the firm foundations of prior work and look confidently toward intentionally designed experiences that captivate, fascinate and delight users at every turn.
Describing something or someone as punk can elicit a wide range of responses. It’s a polarizing term. From punk music to punk culture, it seems we all have different opinions about what punk is and whether or not we identify with it. I’d suspect most people have no strong association and remain indifferent to the term, while some likely despise it.
Those who despise punk culture credit its sloppy facade, affinity for anarchy and ruthless idealism as touchstones for their dislike. Others simply point to Green Day or spiked dog collars. Touché. These critiques are warranted in my opinion, but I view punk culture in a distinctly different light.
The punk philosophy has impacted me dramatically over the years and it continues to inform the way I approach nearly every aspect of my life, from fatherhood to professionalism. Let me explain.
Innovation on a Shoestring
Punks often operate with little-to-no monetary or material resources. The ability to see different angles and make new, interesting things out of existing materials is of extreme value in the punk community. This forward-looking, innovate-at-all-costs approach has been a huge influence on contemporary society, including the modern hacker and DIY movements.
Speed Matters
Speed is a valued attribute in the punk community. Being perfect is good, but being first is better. One only needs to look to the imitation waves following the emergences of influential bands like the MC5 or Minor Threat or The Pixies to realize the significance of shipping early. The same goes for the technology innovators of today. Punk’s unique combination of speed and vehement originality differentiates it from all else.
Discomfort is Necessary
True innovation happens when artists and technologists operate with urgency and uncertainty. If a project I’m working on doesn’t make me just a little bit nervous, I know I’m doing something wrong. That pressure to make the thing work in the face of my unease drives the work to fruition, and powers the new and different. Routine inputs lead to routine outputs and punk culture frowns upon both.
We Stop at Nothing
Punks disregard money, time, status and possessions in pursuit of their passions. They follow their hearts to the ends of the earth to create their craft and it’s evident in the results. Often these projects are audacious and unconventional. Sometimes they take the shape of a song or an app or a robot. The remarkable projects, however, are always steeped with a noticeable passion. It’s in the fiber of the thing. You can sense it.
Authenticity is Paramount
People can tell when someone is faking it and merely throwing shapes. Punk culture is built on a foundation of authenticity and anything half-baked will be called out as such. Truth, honesty and compassion, along with authenticity and transparency, are keystones of the movement.
Punk drove its fangs into me as a teenager and has followed me ever since. It’s present when I talk to my kids about staying true to who they are in the face of peer pressure. It’s present in the writing on this website and in the writers I enjoy reading. It’s an elemental piece of my being.
It’s also present in my daily work at the museum. While I would never advocate for museum anarchism (okay, maybe this kind), I think museums as a whole benefit greatly from the growing sect of MuseoPunks who think differently, experiment freely, challenge preconceived notions and embrace the ethos of punk culture in their life’s work. While they may not self-identify as MuseoPunks (yet!), the community is coalescing around a growing number of progressive practitioners creating projects that push the museum sector forward in interesting ways.
MuseoPunks has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? More on that to come.
This is a sneak peak at a cool project I’m developing at work. We have an exhibition of recent photography acquisitions opening next month and we wanted to experiment with ways visitors (on-site and online) can participate with the works.
We’ll be inviting visitors to respond visually to the works hanging on the walls. They will be able to submit a photo from their mobile device or workstation, and then that image will be posted to the web as photo response. Taking it a bit further, the photos will be printed and then hung next to the work that inspired the derivative. Pretty cool.
The best projects are those that blur the line between digital and physical.
This is also the most elaborate responsive site I’ve built to date. I look forward to sharing it with you when it’s ready. More to come.
Suse Cairns expounds upon her most dangerous idea about museums in the coming year: The greatest threats to museums come from within. On the surface this statement may seem pessimistic, but I feel the best part of the essay comes when Suse highlights the positive potential for the sector moving forward:
This is what I believe. We, as a sector, are in a hugely opportune place right now. We are incredibly well connected to one another, and to ideas from within and external to our own profession. A real energy has started emanating at many of the conferences I’ve attended. We drink about museums together, we talk, we share, and we work.
Social media, conferences, and the generosity of the people who work within the sector make it ever easier to forge strong relationships beyond the walls of our institutions, and hopefully also within them, and to share knowledge and vision with one another. Indeed, they also ensure that there are more ways than ever to speak to our audiences and communities, to invite them to be a part of our vision too. And this all gives us a strong position to build from.
I couldn’t agree more. The astounding passion and creativity and genius of the museum professionals I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know just in the past several months is jaw-dropping.
However, Suse is right. Insularity is the antithesis of progress. We need to look outside of the museum fishbowl for inspiration, collaboration and corroboration if we are to truly effect positive change within the sector. Adapting to shifting environments — be they technological, artistic, cultural or economic — is crucial, and we need to be embracing the examples of our counterparts outside the cultural sector.
Alternatively, we should be telling the stories of our own institutions on more complex levels. We need to share not just our own work, but also the work of others in the sector. We should be remixing the work of others, both inside and outside of the sector, and allowing for others to remix our own work. Innovation comes from the open flow of information.
It’s a great time to be working in a museum. I look forward to sharing some exciting projects from my own institution, as well as others, in the coming year.
I struggle to understand the concept of the New Year’s Resolution. Every year, millions of people select an arbitrary date to start obsessively modifying lifelong behaviors and habits. They hedge their bets on a metaphorical flip of a switch and hope the current of willpower remains flowing in the face of temptation, vices and history.
Speaking from experience, it seems the game is rigged and the whole premise is setting us up for failure.
That said, the idea of personal development and productivity is near to my heart. Becoming better is something I think about daily. This year, however, instead of setting unrealistic goals to which I’ll fall short and, in turn, about which I’ll beat myself up, I’m identifying four focus areas of betterment in the coming year.
I am committed to fully pursuing these four directives in 2013 and beyond:
Be Here, Right Now
Pervasive technologies have their noted benefits, however they tend to take me out of the moment. They remove my focus from what’s right in front of me – the people I’m with and the tasks at hand. Starting today, I will make a conscious effort to remain present in the moment and dedicate my full attention to the people and things of importance before me.
This may involve disconnecting to an extent. Perhaps trimming the network. More appropriately, I think it may entail evaluating the limits and parameters to which platforms can claim my attention. Over the past few months, I’ve felt pulled apart by technology. Disjointed and off-kilter. I’ve made some small adjustments to address these issues, and will continue to modify this area of my life to reach a healthy balance.
Live Healthier
If we’re communicating freely here, I’ve let myself go in recent months. My hectic personal and professional schedules have all but eliminated any time for exercise or healthy eating. This needs to change. One year ago I was in the best shape of my life, on my way to running my first marathon. Then life took over and my health took a back seat to everything else.
I need to establish a system in which my personal health can assume a position of priority again. I have ideas about how this might be done and I’ll be enacting some of these tactics today. I’ll enact more tomorrow.
Create More
A few weeks ago after eating Chinese for lunch (see above), I received a fortune that read, “We are not here to merely exist. We are here to create.” Recently, my creativity has been exclusively professionally-channeled. The (lack of) activity on this site and the quiet end of the ZenGeek Podcast are a testament to that fact.
The fact is I’m extremely passionate about museums and technology. That won’t stop and I’m excited about a number of professional projects slated for 2013. I hope to infuse that passion into this site more than I have in the past.
I also believe creating outside of my professional track is very important. Creativity breeds more creativity. I hope to utilize my personal and professional creative streams to inform the other as a way of making new, interesting things.
Finish
Finally, I need to finish. I am an extremely great starter. I have some pretty good ideas and I start them with enormous enthusiasm and vigor. Just count the domains in my registrar account’s renew queue.
I am the worst finisher. Horrendous. Abysmal, even. I will work to change that in the coming year by saying “no” more than I have in the past and following through on these betterment focus areas.
I will track my progress throughout the year and measure my success. If you’re all open to it, I will share updates with you and perhaps dive a bit deeper into each of the four directives when the time is right and the data warrants it.
For now, though, I will enjoy a quiet end to this year. I will cherish the love of friends & family, and I’ll wake tomorrow ready to start attacking these goals. Happy New Year to you and yours.
I created my Flickr account in March of 2005. It was relatively early in the image sharing platform’s lifespan and right around the time Yahoo! paid big bucks to bring Flickr within its portfolio of web services. At that time, Flickr was a revolutionary tool primarily used by bloggers to host and share photos.
Over the years, Flickr’s feature set became more robust. A passionate community of users circled around the platform and I counted myself among them. They embraced the concept of user privacy and pushed forward with progressive copyright by integrating Creative Commons licensing in its nascent stages. Flickr was on top of the Web 2.0 world.
Then something happened. The web exploded with competing platforms that were focused on making it easier for users to share information. The iPhone was released and the mobile revolution was underway. “Social Media” had arrived and platforms were predicated on innovating at rapid rates.
Innovation at Flickr, however, ceased. Lured by compelling experiences and growing user bases elsewhere, many loyal Flickrists migrated away to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. The writing seemed to be on the wall for the once-great, now-stagnant service. Fearing the worst, I backed up my entire photostream and let my Pro Account expire in January of 2010.
I spent the next three years going about my business on the web without even a thought toward Flickr. Until this week when an update to Flickr for iOS was released to positive reviews.
Feeling nostalgic for my glory days of the web, I downloaded the app to see what all the fuss was about. And the fuss, in my opinion, is justified. With one fell swoop, Flickr has injected itself back into the conversation of web relevance. It’s not about the inclusion of Instagram-like photo filters or location services. Those features are great, but hardly leading edge. What makes this update so great is the combination of these features with a refreshed user experience, Flickr’s outstanding respect for its community of users and the promise of continued innovation from the platform.
This is all good news and exciting for someone who never really wanted to say goodbye. Needless to say, I’m back. It’s been great getting reacquainted with Flickr over the past few days and reconnecting with the community there. I’m curious to see where Flickr goes from here. New leadership at Yahoo! and a newfound energy are positive indications they’re moving in the right direction. That’s great to see.
Joshua Gross exploring the idea that the future of the web is not in real-time information flow:
The real-time web is a bit like a fire hydrant—either the valve is opened or closed, but there’s no filter to stem the flow; we become the filter for the massive flow of information. Content should always feel like a gift, not a burden. To turn it into a gift, we need to start focusing on ways to control the flow.
Agreed. To me, the future of the web is a better filtering system — a way to dictate what, how and when desired information makes its way through input channels. The future has yet to be written, but I think it’s in making sure meaningful content gets where it’s supposed to go in a way that’s dictated by the user. The plumbing, if you will.
Timeliness is good, but timelessness, relevance and control are better.
I can clearly remember the first time I set foot inside a museum. I was seven years old and it was with my second grade class on a field trip to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. I remember the building’s gigantic scale and the timeless nature of the artifacts on display. I remember the smell and the echo of the lobby. I remember leaving with more questions and curiosity than I had when I entered.
In the years since, my personal interests have skewed decidedly toward the arts, but my love affair with museums never left. Instead of becoming awe-inspired by dinosaurs and dioramas, I came to appreciate the delicate touch of paint on canvas, the intricate dance of melodies and harmonies, and the creative process as a whole. I will visit any museum anywhere and spend hours soaking it all in.
Not too far along into my professional career I was lucky to land a technology gig in a mid-size museum here in Pittsburgh. I made a lot of friends and took calculated risks with respect to technology and communication. I felt my work at that museum held meaning because it was helping tell compelling stories about dynamic artists and their work. We had a lot of fun along the way too. I looked forward to going to work each day in a creative environment surrounded by artistic expression.
I left that position in 2010. The story behind my decision to leave is complex and better suited for another blog post, but in short I moved on to a wonderful job in higher education at a university known the world over for its innovation. For the most part, all was well in my professional world.
Then I started to hear the calls. They started as daydreams of a blank white cube open for experimentation, but quickly progressed to visions of working full-time again in an environment surrounded by art, artists and creativity. I quickly realized how much I missed being immersed in a place of art and culture. The museum was calling me, just like it did on that spring Philadelphia day back in 1986.
This week, I acted on this calling by accepting a web and digital media position at the Carnegie Museum of Art, one Pittsburgh’s cultural gems and an international beacon of artistic excellence. The museum has a rich history and is strategically poised for great things down the road. There are some amazing projects on the horizon. I’m extremely excited about this next chapter in my professional life and I look forward to making new friends, as well as reconnecting with my museum colleagues across the globe.
That’s not to say I’m not nervous about this transition. The butterflies are certainly present. A wise woman once said, “If an opportunity scares you, you need to take it.” Change of this magnitude always comes along with an element of unease. However, I’m comforted in the fact that working in the art + tech space is my professional calling. I truly believe it’s what I’m supposed to do.
My experience during the past few weeks has shown me many things, but most importantly I’ve rediscovered how to follow my instincts and pursue the calling that is within me. My situation isn’t special, though. Callings are within all of us. You just have to listen and act.
Two years ago today, I experienced the saddest day of my life. It was a day I will never forget and a situation I hope no one else ever has to live through. Alternatively, eight years ago tomorrow, I experienced the happiest day of my life. It too was a day I will never forget, but in this case I truly wish everyone has a chance to feel the love that surrounded me on that day back in 2004.
Any time a juxtaposition of extreme emotions is compacted into a turbulent timeframe, it creates a great deal of internal tension for us. For me, these 48 hours embody a great conflict. I consistently find myself questioning the appropriateness of my feelings. How can I be simultaneously happy about this one thing and so very sad about this other thing? Why am I letting this cloud of negativity cast its dark shadow on my brilliant memories of pure joy? In all honesty, I don’t have the answers.
What I do have, though, is a vital macro-view of this 48-hour window — the ability to step back and analyze its essence. Through this window, I see the ebb-and-flow of the universe captured in a sort of time-lapse. This juxtaposition shows me the importance of mindful balance and non-attachment. It shows me that lives can be irreversibly altered in an instant and that nothing in this life is permanent. It wrangles up and presents to me the complete spectrum of all the possible feelings and emotions that exist in this world. It swallows me in an ocean of thought where tides bring and take without judgement.
This juxtaposition has taught that the past and the future do not exist. There is only this moment; there is only now. Nothing more and nothing less. Realizing this, I’ve learned to cherish every waking moment. I drink in my surroundings and live fully and completely in the present. I hold my friends and family close, and make sure they know I love them.
Only by living this way can I weather the most violent of juxtapositions and remain in a place of complete peace.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about email. The majority of this recent writing has been about Google’s acquisition of Sparrow, a much-heralded Mac and iOS email client. Bloggers, tech pundits and average dudes are waxing philosophical about the health of the independent developer community, sustainable business models and the relevance of email itself. Good times.
There’s no denying that email is broken. Some are writing about its inherently flawed nature and obsoleteness, while others are making things in an attempt to fix it.
Spoiler: This post is also about email. It’s about email in its most basic state, irrespective of the client or vendor. It’s about potential. It’s about privacy. It’s about the promise of an agnostic platform in an age of proprietary prairies.
Let me explain.
For the past five years, I’ve been writing emails to my son. Shortly after he was born in 2007, I created an email account in his name so I could write to him throughout his childhood and then turn the account over to him when he was of age. Upon opening the account for the first time, he’d be greeted with an archive of his childhood as seen through his father’s eyes.
To date, I’ve sent him a wide array of messages ranging from short one-sentence emails just to let him know I love him to photos of special moments we’ve shared together to diary-like entries that chronicle his developments and our family’s journey together. Our daughter is due to arrive later next month, and I just created an account for her, now that we’ve decided on her name. I sent my first email to my unborn daughter last night.
Why Email?
So why email? Why not a private Facebook page or maybe a shared Evernote notebook? For me, the answers are simple. Ownership and privacy. I want to ensure ownership of the content stays with my children and that the content remains private. I’m talking about privacy in the simplest sense of the word here, not the kind of privacy networks like Facebook lead users to believe is the new standard.
Yes, I understand email can be hacked and messages can be leaked. I don’t believe total information security exists, so given the alternatives, email seems to be the least of all evils. Once content leaves our brains and becomes formalized in the ether, be it in a Moleskine journal or online, the concept of total and complete security flies out the window.
The idea here is that I want this content to exist for my kids in the long-term — when they turn 12 or 14 or 16 or whatever age is appropriate to start tooling around on the internet. Hell, my kids may look at email the way I looked at my Dad’s bell-bottoms when I was 14 and want no part of it. The point though, is that my notes will be available should they desire to access them. And I think they will. They’re good kids.
A lot of users are placing a lot of faith in Facebook and Twitter and Squarespace at the moment, but who ultimately owns the content published on those respective platforms and where will that record of life moments be in five, fifteen or twenty-five years? I’d wager that email will still be around in some form. Facebook? Not so much. Good luck exporting that content from a walled garden.
For all the flack email has been receiving lately, its value is proven. Sure, it’s a pain to manage professionally and inboxes are exploding with spam and bacn for many. Efficiently managed, though, email can be a beautiful thing. Email can be a living portal to years of moments — all indexed, timestamped and contextual.
Dude’s Day
I took my son to a local amusement park the other day. Just the two of us on a “Dude’s Day,” as we like to call these excursions. The amusement park was hosting a Superhero meet-and-greet, where kids could meet Spiderman, Hulk, Thor and Captain America. My son is a huge superhero fan, so he was naturally excited. We were both looking forward to this time together for days leading up to the event.
What surprised me, though, was this: As we waited in line to meet the first hero, he asked if I could take his picture and send it to his email. In that moment I realized that he understands what I’m doing and wants to be a part of it. He’s excited and eager to have access to these notes down the road. I think that’s super cool and it makes my effort worthwile.
Email isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But in this instant, and for this purpose, it’s the most appropriate tool for the job.
Sean Gallagher at Ars Technica on Google’s acquisition of Sparrow:
Like most Sparrow users, the news caught me off-guard; the application had recently been updated in Apple’s App Store, and the latest version had widened its performance lead on Apple’s Mail.app and other Mac OS mail software. But the update turned out to be a final act instead of a prelude to something bigger—and the bow was an undisclosed payday for Leca and Kima Ventures, the French venture capital team that originally backed the company. This is the sort of exit that’s become common to software and Web companies in the current economy, where the only way to get the big payout is to be acquired by a Google, or a Facebook, a Microsoft or an Apple.
I use Sparrow on my desktop and iOS. I absolutely love the application. Sparrow makes email bearable for me, so this is naturally disappointing news.
It’s hard to fault Dom Leca and the Sparrow development team for making the choice to sell out, just as it’s hard to question the decision of Instagram brass to be absorbed into Facebook. What’s disturbing to me, though, is the unstable user environment created by such acquisitions.
I expect such developments when dealing in free apps and lottery ticket business models. It’s harder to stomach when it happens to a shop generating healthy revenue under a viable business strategy. No one saw this one coming.
If we learn one thing from the Facebook – Instagram merger, it should be that we are all for sale and there is no such thing as FREE. These services we use every day are not free services. When we do not directly pay for a service with real money, we pay for it with our data. We pay for it when we broadcast our location, social graph and our status updates.
In the case of yesterday’s acquisition, we are the product being sold.
Facebookization of the masses has caused a morphing of social norms where sharing has become the default. This is obvious to many, but it doesn’t have to be the reality. In order for real change to take place, the curtain of “free service culture” must be lifted through a tipping point of user awareness.
Let’s Break It Down
We are all for sale. Just yesterday, I and 30 million other users were sold for about $33.00 each – a brilliant move for the Instagram folks. Regardless of whether or not this was a smart and strategic business move for Facebook, the reality is this: The images, location data and platform activity of all current and future Instagram users now have a new owner. This new owner happens to be a company I do not personally trust. Therefore, my user account and data are no more.
Maybe you’re completely comfortable with this acquisition. Maybe you don’t care. That’s fine, but you should at least be aware of what’s happening with your data. Often times, the concept of faux-free overshadows the reality that these services are profiting from our activity. While it is the nature of our times and it’s not going away, it should be out in the open.
High profile deals like the Facebook/Instagram acquisition can help with awareness, but with payoffs north of nine zeros they can also create an environment of copycat strategies. How many social startups now have the goal of becoming the next Instagram?
A Plea to Developers
I loved Instagram. The application lived in prominence on my Home Screen. I wrote about how it supplanted the native camera on my phone and I would have happily paid for the service. I’d wager a good portion of the user base, in some capacity, would have as well.
Developers of the next Instagram: please give users the opportunity to directly support your service by paying for it! Please take our money! Please have a sustainable business plan, or better yet, a platform philosophy!
Some platforms are doing it and it’s working. Look at Pinboard. Look at 500pixels. Look at Instapaper. All thriving with a paying user base. It’s time for us, as empowered users of technology, to start following the money.
The Instagram team would have been foolish to turn down a billion dollars. People play the Mega Millions for a reason. They play for a chance to win big. And winning big is a very rare occurrence. Facebook offer removed, Instagram could have leveraged their active user base to earn millions of dollars year over year had they pursued a sustainable revenue stream.
A lottery ticket is not a sustainable business practice.
Now I feel really old. Elliott brought home his first-ever homework assignment. The word of the week at preschool is enthusiastic and he was tasked with completing several statements describing how it feels to be enthusiastic. Jilly transcribed verbatim, but all the responses came straight from his mind.
When I am enthusiastic my eyes… feel loose.
When I am enthusiastic my mouth… smiles.
When I am enthusiastic my tummy feels… really loose.
When I am enthusiastic my muscles feel… like they are jumping.
When I am enthusiastic sometimes I… jump, dance and fall.
These things can make me feel enthusiastic… the zoo, Chuck E. Cheese, hanging up Christmas decorations, computers and Dylan.
When I am enthusiastic I can calm down by doing this… take a deep breath.
We had a white Thanksgiving, the first I can remember. Elliott and I were out early trying to catch the snowflakes on our tongues. The gentle blanket of snow added a layer of comfort to the day.
