When not battling out on the tennis court with Rosa this summer, I've found myself in a similar situation to hers; lacking in employment and money, and overwhelmed by the huge expanse of time that lies between the end of one term and the beginning of the next. (I've personally undertaken the task of fixing my bike, but unless you also own a decrepit old road bike that doesn't brake, change gear or even pedal properly, and consists of all continental parts that have to be searched for on ebay, this is unlikely to appeal to you). Attempting monetary gains outside the realm of employment is always possible, but, from someone 20 cds down and only £40 richer, don't rely on it to relieve your financial woes. No, when time is rich and, well, you aren't, it is the bargain bin of activities to which you must head. And so it is that in the summer time I find myself visiting more galleries and museums than the most artsy of tourists.
It is a widely known London fact that if you grew up in the capital city, the Science Museum was amazing. Large rooms of seemingly impossible games and activities, halls filled with giant spaceships, the sheer hugeness of the place; all of this constituted the greatest play room in the world. Of course, I knew my return to this childhood mecca could never live up to this; this museum had made sure I was well equiped with an understanding of perception, and I was under no illusion that my adult height would no longer be quite so dwarfed. However, the problem I found was greater than this.
For the museum has changed, and science faces a new enemy. Richard Dawkins will have you believe its religion; in truth, it is a misguided fascination with technology. While the old collections remain, it is clear that interactivity is the new direction of the museum. This in itself is not problematic, until you realize the museum’s idea of interactivity is largely based around the abundance of touch screen computers. This is seemingly in an attempt to reduce the effort of actually creating a display, as most of the computers seemed to consist in no more than paragraphs of information with the inclusion of a ‘next button’ at the bottom, no doubt the curator’s attempts to appeal to “all those Twittering kids who probably miss their computers.” It might as well have been printed onto a shoddy notebook and left on a table to lead through; at least that would have excluded the annoying feeling that I could have had the exact same experience on my laptop at home.
All the other computers featured fairly basic activities, the ‘match up the telephone part’ type of game. This would be better, no doubt, if any one the machines had actually been working. For the second problem with this new focus on the digital age is that, generally speaking, real life displays don’t have the same tendency to suddenly turn into a blue-screened error page, thereby making them totally fucking useless. In a room full of 10 or so computers, literally 7 were out of use, a theme made common as we strolled through other parts of the museum.
That’s not to say technology should be shunned, and interactivity rejected; the right touch could enhance the visitor experience greatly, and it would be unforgivable to ignore computers as a milestone in human progression. However visiting the Science Museum today leaves the impression of technology too rudimentary and lazy to offer the magic and excitement that the place once held for the children who visited it. If the museum should tell us anything about science it’s how to bridge gaps, not how to cut corners.
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