Hands up if you own an iPod? Maybe you buy books from Amazon or the odd bargain on eBay? Well, if so, you are part of the Web 2.0 revolution.
Not a revolution in what you are doing, but a revolution in the way you are doing it. The web is changing the way we work and learn. But has this revolution hit museums yet?
Yes and no; some get it, some don't. But the bottom line is the online world is growing and museums have a responsibility to make sure that they are part of it.
I'm not talking about some sort of real versus virtual debate. It is about the online coexisting with the physical. The most popular sites right now are either search engines or online communities such as Second Life - and this is not going to change.
What is going to change is how people search and how they use what they find in their online communities or in their own life.
Searching for stuff online is not hard, but it's going to get harder as we see a swell of digital information, as more and more databases are exposed, more services put online and more people contribute their own stories, pictures or gossip. But how will we find anything? How will we know the true from the false, or the best from the mediocre?
Machines. Robots, spiders, aggregators and search engines. If you like, these are the librarians, shopkeepers, delivery vans, gate keepers - our guides online and they are getting clever.
People are already talking about Web 3.0 or the semantic web and no one really knows exactly how it will all work but they do know it is vital how digital information is packaged, offered and understood by machines. It will need standards, structuring, tagging with relevant meaning to each user.
In a way, search engines are the digital equivalent of the original collectors of the past such as Henry Wellcome or Pitt Rivers. But the machines and robots of the future will be collecting digital meaning, not physical objects.
So museums need to get their digitised collections, objects, texts, archives, podcasts and videos out into the online world where these machines can find it. It's not just museums either, it's archives, galleries, libraries and more: all of us that have culture to share.
Because if those clever search engines can find it and they know what it is and where it is from, then they will be able to deliver it to whatever new services we will all be using in the future.
Exactly what those new online services will be we cannot imagine. I bet our understanding of what online means will not even be the same.
But whatever it is, we need to make sure that culture is part of it, and that will mean working together more closely, agreeing the language we use to talk to the machines and sharing our data more openly.
Jane Finnis is the director of the 24 Hour Museum
Not a revolution in what you are doing, but a revolution in the way you are doing it. The web is changing the way we work and learn. But has this revolution hit museums yet?
Yes and no; some get it, some don't. But the bottom line is the online world is growing and museums have a responsibility to make sure that they are part of it.
I'm not talking about some sort of real versus virtual debate. It is about the online coexisting with the physical. The most popular sites right now are either search engines or online communities such as Second Life - and this is not going to change.
What is going to change is how people search and how they use what they find in their online communities or in their own life.
Searching for stuff online is not hard, but it's going to get harder as we see a swell of digital information, as more and more databases are exposed, more services put online and more people contribute their own stories, pictures or gossip. But how will we find anything? How will we know the true from the false, or the best from the mediocre?
Machines. Robots, spiders, aggregators and search engines. If you like, these are the librarians, shopkeepers, delivery vans, gate keepers - our guides online and they are getting clever.
People are already talking about Web 3.0 or the semantic web and no one really knows exactly how it will all work but they do know it is vital how digital information is packaged, offered and understood by machines. It will need standards, structuring, tagging with relevant meaning to each user.
In a way, search engines are the digital equivalent of the original collectors of the past such as Henry Wellcome or Pitt Rivers. But the machines and robots of the future will be collecting digital meaning, not physical objects.
So museums need to get their digitised collections, objects, texts, archives, podcasts and videos out into the online world where these machines can find it. It's not just museums either, it's archives, galleries, libraries and more: all of us that have culture to share.
Because if those clever search engines can find it and they know what it is and where it is from, then they will be able to deliver it to whatever new services we will all be using in the future.
Exactly what those new online services will be we cannot imagine. I bet our understanding of what online means will not even be the same.
But whatever it is, we need to make sure that culture is part of it, and that will mean working together more closely, agreeing the language we use to talk to the machines and sharing our data more openly.
Jane Finnis is the director of the 24 Hour Museum
