Hello Douglas Worts
    Your note from 8/16 was challenging. I've been thinking about it a bit
since then and have a couple of thoughts.
    Whenever a discussion of substance seems to turn on a particular
technology, my instinct is to try to drop that technology from the discourse
and see if things still make sense. What you addressed in your letter (that was
of most interest to me) was the "authoritarian paradigm" under which museums
(not unlike most other educational institutions) assume their role. How this
hierarchy expresses itself is far from limited to high tech devices. Assuming
control over the meaning of objects is the same whether they are digitized or
in real time. I find the current discussion under the title of "Mummies and
Micro-climates" to be telling in this regard. Who controls the process of
constructing meaning?
    It was, for me, something of a religious experience to read Barthes' "The
Death of the Author" a few years ago. My guess is that "author" is a rather
broad term, and we can easily substitute museum in there. If we can allow
visitors/users the space to create their own meaning from the experience
without the "appropriate" or "correct" interpretation breathing down their
necks, we might be moving in the right direction. Of course the risks are
there. Perpetuating stereotypes, misinformation, etc.,etc.,etc.  Who said it
would be easy?
    I don't see that the medium makes that much difference in dealing with the
underlying issues. Clearly I'm deciding what the underlying issues are, don't
we all?
 
Aaron Goldblatt
Please Touch Museum
[log in to unmask]