Purpose of a museum (was Re: Buying something from a museum)

On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 8:42 AM, <cctalk-request at classiccmp.org> wrote: I disagree strongly with your statement, "There is far too much about the human aspect of a [sic] artefact, and that is not science." Technology is a human behavior, and preserving the artifact (US spelling) but not its cultural context is telling only a small part of the story. That is my concern with much that is written as "computer history": it is purely about the construction and functioning of an artifact but fails to convey that contextual component. Such "internalist" histories are not without value, but we do a disservice to the future if we stop there. Equally incomplete are "externalist" histories that speak of nothing but social response to technology without the context of providing the reader with an understanding of the technology itself: this is seen often in hand-wringing essays that demonize "the computer" as a source of all social ills. A contextual account that relates both the nature of the technology and the social context in which it is shaped, as well as how its creation shapes the society in which it is created, is a basis for a meaningful and useful discourse. It is interesting to me that the majority of historical writing about the computer is internalist (several historiographers have so noted and I concur) and yet the "big story" of the computer is how it has changed human society swiftly and dramatically. In contrast, the book "Technology's Storytellers" analyses the first twenty years of the journal Technology & Culture and finds that in a broad discussion of technology the majority of work is contextual. Why do computer historians seem to describe but not interpret? Finally, a museum of technology may be a very different beast than a classic, archival museum that puts things in cases and writes little signs about them. Indeed, a museum of functional computers is a collection of artifacts that speak in their own voices. Of the museums I have visited, I feel TNMOC and the original IBM museum in Sindelfingen have done the best job of recognizing and highlighting this. (I have not seen the IBM museum since it moved, so I cannot comment on its current state.) IMHO. -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.