Everything that is wrong in museums starts with wall labels

Summary

Everything that is wrong in museums starts with wall labels Luggage Tag for Diablo Supplies Joan Krammer National Museum of American History 1987.3128.101 Recently, I was invited to speak to a Museum Studies class at the University of San Francisco about how machine-learning and artificial intelligence technologies technologies might affect museum collections and in particular the exisiting tools and plumbing museums use to manage those collections. This was the blurb for the talk: It is difficult to separate the issues and questions that contemporary machine-learning and “artificial intelligence” technologies raise in the context of museum without addressing the long history of past attempts to make collections “digital” and how those efforts have played out organizationally over the years. So many of those issues end up being made manifest in the challenges surrounding the production of wall labels and this talk will discuss some inconvenient truths (and opportunities) about museums and computing that AI surfaces. I did not have time to write my notes out in long-form before the talk so if this isn't exactly what I said it is, with the benefit of hindsight, the more polished version of what I was trying to say. I was asked to speak to you about how the introduction and commercial availability of AI technologies might inpact the ways in which museum collections are managed. I am going to take a round-about route to get there. I am going to start with three beliefs — things I hold to be true — so that you can understand where I am comfing from on some of these issues, four short stories and a handful of parenthenticals; things which may not seem immediately relevent but which I think echo, or shadow, the larger conversation. The first belief is that the thing which distinguishes entertainment and culture is the act of revisiting. The distinction is not meant as a value judgement. There is a time and a place for both activities. It is also really important to remembe...