Link tags: museums

[this is aaronland] a tale of gummy snakes (and spunk)

About halfway through this talk transcript, Aaron starts dropping a barrage of truth bombs:

I understand the web, whose distinguishing characteristic is asynchronous recall on a global scale, as the technology which makes revisiting possible in a way that has genuinely never existed before the web.

What the web has made possible are the economics of keeping something, something which has not enjoyed “hockey stick growth”, around long enough for people to warm up to it. Or to survive long past the moment when people may have grown tired of it.

If your goal is to build something which is designed to flip inside of ten years, like many things in the private sector, that may not seem like a very compelling argument.

If, however, your goal is to build something to match the longevity of the cultural heritage sector, to meet the goal of fostering revisiting, or for novel ideas to outlast the reluctance of the present and to do so at a global scale, or really any scale larger than shouting distance, then I will challenge you to find a better vehicle for doing so than the internet, and the web in particular.

Pluralistic: The (open) web is good, actually (13 Nov 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

The web wasn’t inevitable – indeed, it was wildly improbable. Tim Berners Lee’s decision to make a new platform that was patent-free, open and transparent was a complete opposite approach to the strategy of the media companies of the day. They were building walled gardens and silos – the dialup equivalent to apps – organized as “branded communities.” The way I experienced it, the web succeeded because it was so antithetical to the dominant vision for the future of the internet that the big companies couldn’t even be bothered to try to kill it until it was too late.

Companies have been trying to correct that mistake ever since.

A great round-up from Cory, featuring heavy dollops of Anil and Aaron.

[this is aaronland] generative adversarial therapy sessions

Mobile phones and the “app economy”, an environment controlled by exactly two companies and designed to extract a commission from almost every interaction and to promote native and not-portable applications over web applications. But we also see the same behaviour from so-called “native to the web” companies like Facebook who have explicitly monetized reach, access and discovery. Facebook is also the company that gave the world React which is difficult not to understand as deliberate attempt to embrace and extend, to redefine, HTML itself.

Perversely, nearly everything about the mobile/app economy is built on, and designed to use, HTTP precisely because it’s a common and easy to implement standard free and unencumbered by licensing.

[this is aaronland] #mw19 – the presentation

The web embodies principles of openness and portability and access that best align with the needs, and frankly the purpose, of the cultural heritage sector.

Aaron’s talk from the 2019 Museums and the Web conference.

In 2019 the web is not “sexy” anymore and compared to native platforms it can sometimes seems lacking, but I think that speaks as much to people’s desire for something “new” as it does to any apples to apples comparison. On measure – and that’s the important part: on measure – the web affords a better and more sustainable framework for the cultural heritage to work in than any of the shifting agendas of the various platform vendors.

[this is aaronland] fault lines — a cultural heritage of misaligned expectations

When Aaron talks, I listen. This time he’s talking about digital (and analogue) preservation, and how that can clash with licensing rules.

It is time for the sector to pick a fight with artists, and artist’s estates and even your donors. It is time for the sector to pick a fight with anyone that is preventing you from being allowed to have a greater — and I want to stress greater, not total — license of interpretation over the works which you are charged with nurturing and caring for.

It is time to pick a fight because, at least on bad days, I might even suggest that the sector has been played. We all want to outlast the present, and this is especially true of artists. Museums and libraries and archives are a pretty good bet if that’s your goal.

Archives & Museum Informatics: Museums and the Web 2010: Papers: Cope, A.S., Buckets and Vessels

Here’s one to add to Instapaper or Readability to savour at your leisure: Aaron Straup Cope’s talk at Museums and the Web 2010:

This paper examines the act of association, the art of framing and the participatory nature of robots in creating artifacts and story-telling in projects like Flickr Galleries, the API-based Suggestify project (which provides the ability to suggest locations for other people’s photos) and the increasing number of bespoke (and often paper-based) curatorial productions.