Now digital media runs through the work of many museums, we can think about the implications. What do they do to us as people, and as institutions? We hear increasingly about museums and social justice, but how technology is implicated in that ambition is often overlooked.
The theme of this year’s Museums Computer Group (MCG) conference was “museums and tech in a divided world”. Following a stirring introduction from outgoing MCG chair Mia Ridge, there was a passionate keynote from Derby Museums’ Hannah Fox, who highlighted the sense of civic purpose at the heart of its new Museum of Making.
Presentations explored the rich interplay between digital and analogue, and the ethics of blurring truth and fiction. We were introduced to thoughtfully conceived accessible tech, playfulness and creativity. Workforce diversity was also under scrutiny, with London Metropolitan Archives’ Abira Hussein powerfully reminding us just how much remains to be done. Flow Associates’ Bridget McKenzie made a plea for those working with museum technologies to put them to use in pursuit of sociocracy.
If museums are not neutral, then neither is their tech. Our platforms are as flawed as the humans who build them, and often designed for ends that do not mirror our own. They can be oppressive spaces. Our uses of them are consequential.
Ross Parry, an expert in digital media from the University of Leicester’s museum studies school, closed the conference with a call for a renewed concern with digital literacy, which could not be more timely.
Jenny Kidd is the director of teaching and learning at Cardiff University’s school of journalism
The theme of this year’s Museums Computer Group (MCG) conference was “museums and tech in a divided world”. Following a stirring introduction from outgoing MCG chair Mia Ridge, there was a passionate keynote from Derby Museums’ Hannah Fox, who highlighted the sense of civic purpose at the heart of its new Museum of Making.
Presentations explored the rich interplay between digital and analogue, and the ethics of blurring truth and fiction. We were introduced to thoughtfully conceived accessible tech, playfulness and creativity. Workforce diversity was also under scrutiny, with London Metropolitan Archives’ Abira Hussein powerfully reminding us just how much remains to be done. Flow Associates’ Bridget McKenzie made a plea for those working with museum technologies to put them to use in pursuit of sociocracy.
If museums are not neutral, then neither is their tech. Our platforms are as flawed as the humans who build them, and often designed for ends that do not mirror our own. They can be oppressive spaces. Our uses of them are consequential.
Ross Parry, an expert in digital media from the University of Leicester’s museum studies school, closed the conference with a call for a renewed concern with digital literacy, which could not be more timely.
Jenny Kidd is the director of teaching and learning at Cardiff University’s school of journalism
