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  1. title: post-modern late-capitalism or late-capitalist post-modernism?
  2. url: https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/#mw19
  3. hash_url: 13d7a83861f503c01493dcd8c8d459cb
  4. <div style="font-style:italic;">
  5. <p>These are the slides and notes for a talk I gave at the
  6. 2019 <a href="https://mw19.mwconf.org">Museums and the Web</a> conference, in
  7. Boston. The talk accompanied a paper I wrote for the
  8. conference titled <a href="https://mw19.mwconf.org/paper/mapping-space-time-and-the-collection-at-sfo-museum/">Mapping
  9. Space, Time, and the Collection at SFO Museum</a> which
  10. documents the work we've been doing on the <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/">Mills
  11. Field</a> website at <a href="https://sfomuseum.org/">SFO Museum</a>.</p>
  12. <p>Although the talk focuses on the work we're doing at
  13. SFO it is the continuation of some broader themes I've been
  14. actively banging on for a while. If you'd like to read more
  15. then I would point you to the <a href="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2014/09/11/brand/#dconstruct">still
  16. life with emotional contagion</a> and <a href="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2014/10/06/interpretation/#brick">this
  17. is my brick / there are many like it but this one is mine</a>
  18. talks, both from 2014, the <a href="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2015/03/16/mention/#breaking-up">history
  19. is time breaking up with itself</a> talk from 2015 and the <a href="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2017/02/20/mostly/#museumnext">fault
  20. lines — a cultural heritage of misaligned expectations</a> talk from 2017.</p>
  21. <p>In 2019, this is what I said.</p>
  22. </div>
  23. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-001">
  24. <div class="image640">
  25. <a href="#mw-2019-001">
  26. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.001.jpeg"/>
  27. </a>
  28. </div>
  29. <p>Hi, my name is Aaron.</p>
  30. <p>I am the Head of Internet Typing at the <a href="https://sfomuseum.org/">San Francisco
  31. International Airport Museum</a>. As silly as a title like that may
  32. sound (and I actually have an even more vague and opaque
  33. official title for HR purposes) it is the best way to describe
  34. my role at the museum.</p>
  35. <p>In the past I have been part of the teams at <a href="https://www.flickr.com/">Flickr</a>, <a href="https://www.stamen.com/">Stamen</a>
  36. Design and <a href="https://www.mapzen.com/">Mapzen</a> where the common thread has been maps and
  37. location. I was also part of the <a href="https://labs.cooperhewitt.org/">Digital and Emerging Media</a> team
  38. at the <a href="https://www.cooperhewitt.org/">Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum</a> helping to
  39. re-open the museum and <a href="https://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/strategies-against-architecture-interactive-media-and-transformative-technology-at-cooper-hewitt/">launch the Pen</a> in 2014.</p>
  40. </div>
  41. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-002">
  42. <div class="image640">
  43. <a href="#mw-2019-002">
  44. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.002.jpeg"/>
  45. </a>
  46. </div>
  47. <p>The <a href="https://www.flysfo.com/">San Francisco International Airport</a>, or SFO, first opened
  48. in 1927 on the site of the old <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2018/08/08/why/">Mills Field</a> in San Mateo
  49. County. Although SFO is physically situated in San Mateo it is owned
  50. and operated by the <a href="https://sfgov.org/">City and County of San Francisco</a>. Like the
  51. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands">Farallon Islands</a>, 30 miles off the Pacific Coast, SFO is
  52. actually part of San Francisco proper but unlike the Farallons
  53. is <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2019/01/14/gates/images/sf-centroids.png">never shown that way on a map</a>.</p>
  54. <p>SFO is the 20th busiest airport in the world and 7th busiest
  55. in the United States. Last year, approximately 58 million
  56. passengers flew in and out of the airport.</p>
  57. </div>
  58. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-003">
  59. <div class="image640">
  60. <a href="#mw-2019-003">
  61. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.003.jpeg"/>
  62. </a>
  63. <div class="exhibition-title"><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1376812931/">Reflections in Wood - Surfboards and Shapers</a> (2019)</div>
  64. </div>
  65. <p>Since 1980 the airport has had a museum. First accredited in
  66. 1999 the museum currently has 37 full-time and up to 24
  67. part-time staff.</p>
  68. <p>This is a photograph of the "<a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1376812931/">Reflections in Wood - Surfboards
  69. and Shapers</a>" exhibition currently on display in the
  70. International Terminal. Everything you see in this photo – from
  71. the curatorial programming, to registration and conservation,
  72. handling, exhibition design, fabrication and installation as
  73. well as the graphic design and photography – all of this was
  74. done in-house.</p>
  75. <p>This is the work of my peers and they do this <em>30 to 40 times</em>
  76. a year, 80 if you include the recently inaugurated <a href="https://www.flysfo.com/museum/programs/video-arts-history">video arts
  77. program</a>. I just sit in the corner pecking away at a keyboard
  78. connected to the internet.</p>
  79. </div>
  80. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-004">
  81. <div class="image640">
  82. <a href="#mw-2019-004">
  83. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.004.jpeg"/>
  84. </a>
  85. </div>
  86. <p>In addition to the almost <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/years/">1,400 exhibitions</a> the museum has
  87. produced since 1980 it has a <a href="https://www.flysfo.com/museum/aviation-museum-library/collection">permanent collection of 130,000
  88. objects</a> related to the history of the airport and commercial
  89. aviation. We also maintain a <a href="https://www.flysfo.com/museum/aviation-museum-library/research-services">library and an archive</a> of materials
  90. related to the aviation collection.</p>
  91. <p>At any given moment there are <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/on-display/">upwards of 1,000 objects on
  92. display</a> in the terminals.</p>
  93. <p>On top of all of that we are charged with the care of the <a href="https://www.flysfo.com/museum/public-art/public-collection">one
  94. hundred plus public artworks purchased by the San Francisco Arts
  95. Commission</a> and installed on the airport property.</p>
  96. </div>
  97. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-005">
  98. <div class="image640">
  99. <a href="#mw-2019-005">
  100. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.005.jpeg"/>
  101. </a>
  102. <div class="exhibition-title"><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1226607773/">Bowling: A Unique American Art Form</a> (1991)</div>
  103. </div>
  104. <p>You might be wondering: How did all of this happen?</p>
  105. <p>The answer is basically that in the 1970s the airport
  106. commissioners decided SFO should be a <q>nice place</q> to
  107. visit. The Bay Area, and San Francisco in particular, is
  108. complicated and has gotten a lot of things wrong over the
  109. years. Sometimes though, when it cuts loose and <a href="https://thesixfifty.com/get-to-know-the-curator-behind-many-of-sfos-world-class-museum-exhibits-773068a4ff98">gets it right</a>
  110. you end up with a museum in an airport.</p>
  111. </div>
  112. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-006">
  113. <div class="image640">
  114. <a href="#mw-2019-006">
  115. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.006.jpeg"/>
  116. </a>
  117. <div class="exhibition-title"><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1159160369/">Japanese Toys! From Kokeshi to Kaiju</a> (2013)</div>
  118. </div>
  119. <p>If you measure things by foot traffic we are one of the
  120. busiest museums in the world. If that is the case we are also
  121. one of the busiest museums in the world that no one knows
  122. about. Nothing in modern life really prepares you for the idea that
  123. a museum should be part of an airport. San Francisco, as I've
  124. mentioned, is funny that way.</p>
  125. <p>People often ask: Where is the museum? Almost no one is aware
  126. that there are <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/galleries">over twenty gallery spaces spanning the
  127. terminals</a>, both before and after security. Over the years there
  128. have been <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/galleries/all/">three times that number</a>, rotating in and out as the
  129. airport has grown and changed.</p>
  130. <p>So, in a very real sense the airport <em>is</em> the museum.</p>
  131. <p>If people are ill-equipped to deal with the idea of a museum
  132. in an airport they are even less prepared to consider the idea
  133. that one has been there for the last 39 years. Lots of people will tell you about one or two exhibitions
  134. they've seen in a particular terminal but rarely have any idea
  135. of <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/galleries/1159157053/exhibitions/all">all the things that have come before it</a> in that very same
  136. spot.</p>
  137. </div>
  138. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-007">
  139. <div class="image640">
  140. <a href="#mw-2019-007">
  141. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.007.jpeg"/>
  142. </a>
  143. </div>
  144. <p>That's where <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/">the work I do</a> comes in to the picture.</p>
  145. <p>What is the promise of the internet – and in particular the
  146. web – if not the stringing together of all the things that came
  147. before or that follow any given moment?</p>
  148. <p><strong>When people ask me what I am doing I tell them it is <q>to
  149. ensure that every aspect of a trip to SFO, and every facet of
  150. someone’s time spent in the airport, leads back to the museum’s
  151. collection</q> and that we are using the internet to make that
  152. possible.</strong></p>
  153. <p>That means the terminal you're standing in or the boarding
  154. gate you're waiting at, the airline or
  155. aircraft you're flying on, the places you're traveling to, the
  156. gallery space you're looking at or the places the objects in an
  157. exhibition are from. All of it. <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/collection/">And all of it holds hands in
  158. some way with our collection.</a></p>
  159. <p style="font-style:italic;">By the way this is not how I see my role in relation to the
  160. airport or the museum. This is a mock-up I made to suggest
  161. installing the dinosaur that used to be on display in the old
  162. Terminal 2 out on the airfield. It's unlikely to ever happen
  163. but it's a nice idea, right?</p>
  164. </div>
  165. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-008">
  166. <div class="image640">
  167. <a href="#mw-2019-008">
  168. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.008.jpeg"/>
  169. </a>
  170. </div>
  171. <p>I have also written <a href="https://mw19.mwconf.org/paper/mapping-space-time-and-the-collection-at-sfo-museum/">a 5,000 word paper about that work</a> for
  172. this conference and I don't want to spend my time with you today
  173. parroting everything I've already said there.</p>
  174. </div>
  175. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-009">
  176. <div class="image640">
  177. <a href="#mw-2019-009">
  178. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.009.jpeg"/>
  179. </a>
  180. </div>
  181. <p>I want to do a high-level overview of the what and how
  182. discussed in detail in the paper so that we can spend a little
  183. more time on the why.</p>
  184. </div>
  185. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-010">
  186. <div class="image640">
  187. <a href="#mw-2019-010">
  188. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.010.jpeg"/>
  189. </a>
  190. </div>
  191. <p>And then a little more time still on how I see our work in
  192. the context of some larger sector-wide dynamics that I believe
  193. we all need to address.</p>
  194. </div>
  195. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-011">
  196. <div class="image640">
  197. <a href="#mw-2019-011">
  198. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.011.jpeg"/>
  199. </a>
  200. </div>
  201. <p>To explain what we're doing I need to begin with some basic
  202. statements of truth in our world:</p>
  203. <ul class="rel">
  204. <li><p>That the notion of place is inseparable from an
  205. airport. After all everyone passing through our doors is coming
  206. from or going to some place.</p></li>
  207. <li><p>Like the passengers everything the museum displays in
  208. its gallery cases is also from some place.</p></li>
  209. <li><p>Part of SFO Museum's mandate is the history of the airport.</p></li>
  210. <li><p>History is inseparable from
  211. place.</p></li>
  212. </ul>
  213. <p>With that in mind we have made place and time (history) the
  214. joints – really a kind of double-joint – around which everything
  215. in the collection pivots. Everything means individual objects all the way up through
  216. the terminals and the airport itself and then beyond SFO to the
  217. other <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/airports/">airports</a>, <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/cities/">cities</a> and <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/countries/">countries</a> that are relevant to our
  218. collection. Then we multiply it all by time allowing any event – an
  219. exhibition, say – to be <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2019/01/14/gates/">situated in a context relevant to that
  220. moment</a>.</p>
  221. <p><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/buildings/1159396327/">SFO in 1982</a>, for example, was a very different place than it is today <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/buildings/1159157271/">in 2019</a>.</p>
  222. </div>
  223. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-012">
  224. <div class="image640">
  225. <a href="#mw-2019-012">
  226. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.012.jpeg"/>
  227. </a>
  228. </div>
  229. <p>For those places outside the airport campus we are using an
  230. existing openly licensed gazetteer of places called <a href="https://whosonfirst.org/">Who's On
  231. First</a> for record identifiers. This is our shared vocabulary for
  232. place.</p>
  233. <p>For those places inside the airport <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2018/08/28/whosonfirst/">we are extending the
  234. Who's On First model</a> to represent the buildings and interior
  235. spaces over the years.</p>
  236. <p>For example there are <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/search/?q=T1&amp;placetype=terminal">multiple records for "Terminal 1"</a>, each
  237. representing a unique phase-shift in its history. A phase-shift
  238. is defined as any meaningful change in how a passenger might
  239. experience that place. For example, the experience and the
  240. meaning of "Terminal 1" will change once more this summer with
  241. the opening of a new and much larger terminal named after Harvey
  242. Milk.</p>
  243. <p>Each instance of Terminal 1 is linked to the record that
  244. precedes it and the record that follows it. We model any and all
  245. the architectural elements in our collection this way creating a
  246. tapestry of breadcrumbs that spans both place and history.</p>
  247. </div>
  248. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-013">
  249. <div class="image640">
  250. <a href="#mw-2019-013">
  251. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.013.jpeg"/>
  252. </a>
  253. </div>
  254. <p>We are extending this approach to <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/galleries/">galleries</a> and <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/">exhibitions</a> as well as
  255. things in our collection that don't have ground truth; they
  256. aren't physical places you can visit. This includes objects and constituents, <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2018/12/03/airlines/">airlines and
  257. aircraft</a>, <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2019/01/18/flights/">historical flight data</a> as well as <a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2019/01/02/surface/">photographs of
  258. things</a> directly and indirectly related to the collection.</p>
  259. <p>This is ongoing work and we may still paint ourselves in to a
  260. few corners but we think it is a promising approach.</p>
  261. <p>I have always seen the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190114221103/https://labs.cooperhewitt.org/2013/giv-do/">Cooper Hewitt's search-by-colour
  262. functionality</a> as a deliberate attempt to manufacture avenues in
  263. to their collection for people who do not already have an
  264. intimate knowledge of the decorative arts. We are trying to do
  265. the same thing, but with space and time, for our collection.</p>
  266. </div>
  267. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-014">
  268. <div class="image640">
  269. <a href="#mw-2019-014">
  270. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.014.jpeg"/>
  271. </a>
  272. </div>
  273. <p>We are building for the web first, rather than targeting any
  274. of the big platform vendors.</p>
  275. <p><strong>The web embodies principles
  276. of openness and portability and access that best align with the
  277. needs, and frankly the purpose, of the cultural heritage
  278. sector.</strong></p>
  279. <p>We are also publishing everything as openly-licensed data. We
  280. have chosen to publish everything using the <a href="https://macwright.org/2015/03/23/geojson-second-bite.html">GeoJSON</a> format
  281. because it has a near-zero barrier to entry, is flexible enough
  282. to accommodate museum-specific metadata and because it is
  283. supported by nearly every geospatial application, open and
  284. closed source, on the market today. Everything we publish has
  285. location baked in to it from the start.</p>
  286. <p>There is one other important twist in the way we are
  287. publishing open data.</p>
  288. </div>
  289. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-015">
  290. <div class="image640">
  291. <a href="#mw-2019-015">
  292. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.015.jpeg"/>
  293. </a>
  294. </div>
  295. <p>Historically the model for most digital or web-based
  296. initiatives has been to first export data from an internal
  297. collections management system. Second, that data is massaged in
  298. to an intermediate form for use by the project at hand and then
  299. third, exported again in to a typically bespoke machine-readable
  300. format.</p>
  301. </div>
  302. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-016">
  303. <div class="image640">
  304. <a href="#mw-2019-016">
  305. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.016.jpeg"/>
  306. </a>
  307. </div>
  308. <p>We have changed the order of things to publish the open data
  309. representation first and then, from there, to build our own
  310. websites and services on top of that.</p>
  311. </div>
  312. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-017">
  313. <div class="image640">
  314. <a href="#mw-2019-017">
  315. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.017.jpeg"/>
  316. </a>
  317. </div>
  318. <p>Everything I've described so far has been built using <a href="https://github.com/sfomuseum-data">the
  319. same raw materials</a> that we've made available for you to do
  320. something with. This introduces a non-zero cost in the build
  321. process for the public-facing museum efforts but we believe it's
  322. worth the cost.</p>
  323. <p>But why, right?</p>
  324. </div>
  325. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-018">
  326. <div class="image640">
  327. <a href="#mw-2019-018">
  328. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.018.jpeg"/>
  329. </a>
  330. <div class="exhibition-title"><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1159160665/">Stepping Out: Shoes in World Cultures</a> (2017)</div>
  331. </div>
  332. <p>First of all we <em>want</em> other people to build new interfaces and
  333. new services, new "experiences" even, on top of our collection
  334. so this is a way to keep ourselves honest. If we can't build
  335. something with this stuff why should we imagine you will?</p>
  336. <p>Second, we want to ensure that the data we release and the
  337. manner in which it is published, is actually robust and flexible
  338. enough to engender a variety of interfaces and uses because we
  339. <em>need</em> that variety. It is
  340. important to the museum because I don't believe there is, or
  341. should be, only one master narrative in to the collection.</p>
  342. </div>
  343. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-019">
  344. <div class="image640">
  345. <a href="#mw-2019-019">
  346. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.019.jpeg"/>
  347. </a>
  348. <div class="exhibition-title"><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1226603769/">Barbie® Takes A Vacation to Exotic Places </a> (1996)</div>
  349. </div>
  350. <p>To some degree all museums have reluctant audiences. Our
  351. visitors will not, and do not, warm up to our collections in the
  352. same way or at the same pace. This is especially true in an
  353. airport where people don't expect to find a museum in the first
  354. place and where our audience doesn't fit neatly in to a handful
  355. of demographic boxes.</p>
  356. <p>As such we have an incentive to ensure that our work affords
  357. us the ability to iterate and experiment with as wide a range of
  358. interfaces and applications as possible, and for them to be just
  359. as fast and cheap to produce as they are to sustain over long
  360. periods of time and left to grow roots, to be nurtured.</p>
  361. <p>We need to put in place an infrastructure that allows us to
  362. manage the cost of failure and germination, equally. A common
  363. mistake we make with digital initiatives in the cultural
  364. heritage sector is to assume those are same thing. They are not.</p>
  365. <p>We need to start designing around the idea of false starts.</p>
  366. </div>
  367. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-020">
  368. <div class="image640">
  369. <a href="#mw-2019-020">
  370. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.020.jpeg"/>
  371. </a>
  372. <div class="exhibition-title"><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1226612011/">Artist's Furniture: New Dimensions and Statements in Design</a> (1982)</div>
  373. </div>
  374. <p>There is another, more practical, reason to design for false
  375. starts:</p>
  376. <p>In 2019, if the past is any guide, most if not all the
  377. digital initiatives we work on today are destined to fail. More
  378. likely, they will just be left to die on the vine. Go ahead and take
  379. a moment to admire this beautiful chair while you let that sink in.</p>
  380. <p>This is the elephant in the room, in every room where we talk about
  381. this stuff. It is a complex and nuanced subject, not one we have
  382. time to discuss properly here but it's real. My own feeling is
  383. that at its root it boils down to the problem of long-term staffing that
  384. permeates the sector – of hiring and more importantly keeping
  385. people with the requisite skills around.</p>
  386. <p>Saying that, though, also a bit like being in the middle of a
  387. hurricane and complaining about the problem of hurricanes. Right
  388. now, the immediate problem is just getting through to the other
  389. side of the storm.</p>
  390. <p>Right now the problem is thinking about how to build things
  391. to survive the short-term enthusiasms and trigger-finger
  392. disillusionments that seem to define our efforts. To prevent a
  393. reset to zero with each and every false start.</p>
  394. <div style="font-style:italic;">
  395. <p>At this point, and based on some conversations I had during
  396. the conference, it's probably worth being explicit about a
  397. couple things in a way that I wasn't during the talk.</p>
  398. <p>First, saying that we need to <q>manage the cost of
  399. failure</q> or <q>design for false starts</q> should not be
  400. confused with the maxim of <q>failing fast (and failing
  401. often)</q>. This has been rightly called out as a kind of intellectual dodge to accommodate and
  402. legitimize lazy and sloppy practices that don't consider or
  403. actively ignore their consequences. So, not that.</p>
  404. <p>At the same time the
  405. worst possible outcome for the museum sector would be to use
  406. that critique as an excuse to continue with its own
  407. problematic working practices that have favoured overpriced
  408. aspirational battleships whose worth, whose success and failure, is measured only in
  409. third-party validation.</p>
  410. <p>There is a way to work fast and cheap and do things the
  411. right way, all while being forgiving of honest mistakes along
  412. the way. It's hard work to juggle all those concerns but
  413. that is not the same as <q>impossible</q>. Sometimes failure really
  414. is the manifestation of negligence but just as often it is the
  415. guide rail we use to understand the shape of success.</p>
  416. <p>Second, to say that everything we do today <q>will fail</q>
  417. is not meant suggest we should just kick back, give up, get
  418. our zen on and go to the bar. Not at all. It's pretty awful
  419. watching what has happened to all the good work produced over
  420. the years. It's wrong. It's wrong but it still happens and for
  421. those reasons we need to be clear-eyed about what's going on
  422. in order that we might figure out how to stop it from happening
  423. again and again and again...</p>
  424. </div>
  425. </div>
  426. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-021">
  427. <div class="image640">
  428. <a href="#mw-2019-021">
  429. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.021.jpeg"/>
  430. </a>
  431. <div class="exhibition-title"><a href="https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/1226603375/">Building for Air Travel</a> (1997)</div>
  432. </div>
  433. <p>But why, indeed?</p>
  434. <p>Let's take it for granted that a core function – again, a
  435. purpose – of the cultural heritage sector is access. From there
  436. let's imagine that access can be defined along an axis spanning
  437. broadcast to recall.</p>
  438. <p>Broadcast being the ability to have your contemporary efforts
  439. reach as many people as possible with the least amount of
  440. friction. Recall being the ability for those same people to access all
  441. that broadcast material after the fact when you have moved on to
  442. some other contemporary concern.</p>
  443. <p>The internet, it's clear, has been a boon to both but if we
  444. focus solely on broadcasting, on the "Channels" and on experiences in the moment
  445. then we are presented with something of an existential
  446. problem because the humanities are predicated on the idea of revisiting a
  447. subject or an idea and on revisiting it repeatedly.</p>
  448. <p><q>The past keeps changing,</q> the historian <a href="http://www.margaretmacmillan.com/">Margaret
  449. MacMillan</a> has said, <q>because we keep asking different questions
  450. of it.</q></p>
  451. <p>Put bluntly: Without recall there is little to revisit and if
  452. there is no revisiting is there even a cultural history?</p>
  453. <p>The internet, and <em>specifically the web</em>, has made recall and
  454. by extension access possible in a way that we have genuinely
  455. never known before. In 2019 the web is not <q>sexy</q> anymore
  456. and compared to native platforms it can sometimes seems
  457. lacking, but I think that speaks as much to people's desire for
  458. something <q>new</q> as it does to any apples to apples comparison. On measure – and that's the important part: on measure
  459. – the web affords a better and more sustainable framework for
  460. the cultural heritage to work in than any of the shifting agendas of
  461. the various platform vendors.</p>
  462. <p>For many years I think we all saw Tim Berners Lee's decision
  463. to make the web open by design as quaint, the actions of a
  464. <q>nice scholarly British
  465. man</q>. In recent years, as the platform vendors (sometimes called <a href="https://blog.esterling.co.uk/2012/03/16/bruce-sterling-on-%E2%80%98the-stacks%E2%80%99/">the
  466. <q>Stacks</q></a>) continue to build higher and higher walls in to
  467. and out of their walled gardens, <a href="https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/228960085672599552">the magnitude of
  468. Berners Lee's choice</a> has become clearer and ever more important.</p>
  469. <p>This is why we have chosen to do things in the ways I have described to you today.</p>
  470. </div>
  471. <div class="slide" id="mw-2019-022">
  472. <div class="image640">
  473. <a href="#mw-2019-022">
  474. <img src="https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2019/04/08/post/images/mw-2019.022.jpeg"/>
  475. </a>
  476. </div>
  477. <p>In closing I'd like to leave you with a passage
  478. from the opening of <a href="https://chireviewofbooks.com/2018/01/16/how-emily-wilson-translated-the-odyssey/">Emily Wilson's translation</a> of Homer's The Odyssey:</p>
  479. <blockquote><pre>Tell the old story
  480. for our modern times
  481. Find the beginning</pre></blockquote>
  482. </div>