26 Jan
2010
26 Jan
'10
11:21 a.m.
On 1/26/10 10:26 AM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
Presumably, if Al, Dag Spicer, and the others at CHM
encounter visitors
who want to do more hands-on, then I assume they inform the visitors
about options such as Digibarn, VCF, etc.
So it works both ways. Different scales/scopes of museums cater to
different audiences.
What works for us in MARCH is, as hackers say, "the hands-on imperative."
Of course that changes somewhat with our larger / rarer / older artifacts.
I do try to explain the differences when people ask why we don't have more running
hardware. It is a challenge and requires a team of dedicated volunteers to keep the
PDP-1 in good shape to be shown as a scheduled exhibit, for example.
What we hope CHM will be in the future is the place where techies and non-techies can
experience our computing heritage. We'll be very busy this coming year building a
world-
class exhibit on the history of computing that will be the next phase in the
institution's
evolution, and I am continuing to develop CHM's software and documentation
collections.