> But these physical exhibits require maintenance, and I was dismayed to see that several are in bad repair; some of them weren’t even working anymore, some seemed worn out, or didn’t seem well-designed to begin with.
To be fair, that's what I remember children's museums being like in the 1980s as well. A significant number of exhibits would be temporarily out of order on any given day.
I don't think screens are responsible for that. Maintaining physical exhibits that can survive constant physical contact with kids is hard.
> I don't think screens are responsible for that. Maintaining physical exhibits that can survive constant physical contact with kids is hard.
That reminds me of something I’d love to learn a bit more about: the Strong Museum of Play. It appears the Wegmans’ supermarket exhibit where kids are able to work with real point-of-sale equipment has actually gotten equipment refreshes over the years itself, and I was really amused to see how far they went to have a “fully working” setup in the exhibits for kids to play with.
The checkout counters are actual IBM/Toshiba SurePOS lanes, with actual current Datalogic scanner scales, and they’ve got a OS4690/TCxSky install and SurePOS ACE running on every single lane. (Or, at least, one of those registers has to be a controller+terminal, the other 5 lanes have to bootstrap off at least one lane, so they’re all networked, too!) They’ve also maintained enough of the store configuration so receipts look just like a store receipt and all (of course, with the Strong Museum as the “store”). And yes, you’re told to only push certain buttons and only scan stuff that’s inside the environment… ;)
Over the years they’ve swapped out the lanes from the old white to the modern Slate Grey, upgraded the scanner-scales, but the UX is still the same as it always was.
You have to keep those sort of museums up to date. As I recall the Computer History Museum in Boston, they had some interesting historical artifacts like Sage I think. But a fair bit of the museum was devoted to supposedly state of the art computing, some interactive. As a lot of the local computer companies went away, a lot of the the exhibits started looking pretty dated--and I'm sure a lot of funding dried up as well.
I go to the Strong almost every weekend with my kids and they love it. I think there are some examples of poor uses of technology that the OP is talking about (screens that just replicate something you could play at home). But there is also some incredibly cool stuff that combines technology with physical play.
I was a tour guide at the National Air and Space Museum for a dozen years. I still remember seeing the exhibit plans the curators had, which called for a then 90-year old airplane (a Curtiss JN-4) to be mounted such that people could look down over it from the balcony. All of us docents who saw that immediately said "what about the kids who will drop pennies onto that precious canvas and wood thing to break it?"
Six months after the exhibit opening the Jenny was removed from that location, never to be returned to that exhibit. Because sometimes museum guests aren't just pushing things too hard, they are actively taking steps to destroy things, just to see if they can get away with it.
Because sometimes museum guests aren't just pushing things too hard, they are actively taking steps to destroy things, just to see if they can get away with it.
If there is only two troublemakers in every group of 30 children, and a museum receives 10 groups a day, that’s 20 little rascals who are all trying to do the craziest stunt they can come up with…
It's not just museum exhibits and kids, it's everything. I have some maintenance roles in my background and the rate at which things like paper towel dispensers get worn down and completely destroyed when interacted with by hundreds or thousands of people a day is eye opening.
I think mass market paperbacks in standardized sizes hold up pretty well considering everything. My collection mostly from the 1970s and 1980s held up pretty well up to 2010 but they are going yellow now because of the acid paper. Libraries rebind them and I notice they have a lot of rebound paperbacks of the same age that have the same yellowing mine have despite better storage conditions.
Some trade paperbacks are fine but because they're not really standardized quality is all over the place. I've bought some where the binding broke the minute I spread the book out. Hardcovers are more consistent than trade paperbacks but some still fail early.
Then there are just the accidents like the book I had in my backpack when I was outside in heavy rain but I think that was one book wrecked in about 300 circulations.
Sometimes I really feel like this is a cultural problem rather than a maintenance problem. Visiting Japan was really eye-opening for me. They have almost no trash cans in public places, but they also have far less litter; it's just a cultural norm that you might have to carry your trash for a while, and people just do it. There are great clean public bathrooms everywhere, because they are so much easier to maintain -- no one destroys them, there's no need to lock them up. They don't have to worry about paper towel dispensers being destroyed, because they don't have them; instead, everyone carries around a handkerchief-sized towel in their pocket.
I guess it's because it's waaaay too expensive to buy really robust things (like paper towel dispensers). It's not like you couldn't build an indestructible paper towel dispenser, but it would cost 10x a normal one and have 100x smaller market.
Since these towel dispensers are all over schools and other locations that likely get more traffic than that museum, either they are buying the good models which everyone in the business knows about, or they are choosing to buy the cheap ones because it is a better value despite having to replace them all the time. I don't buy such things so I'm not able to tell you which. I know that there are enough of them in the world that anything not robust would be well known quickly. (there is a possibility they bought something new that turned out bad, but then replace it once and done)
It's cus all skilled workers learned they can charge insane rates. Blue collar skilled labor starts at 100$ an hour in West Virginia or Mississippi now. Most of them, like Software, have learned that it's hard to figure out if the work they did was good or not until afterwards. As such, there are tons of charlatans, grifters, scammers, and related in many industries right now. Classic cases are Dentists (Literally everything), Car Mechanics (blinker fluid scams to grandma), Plumbers, Leak Detection Companies, etc
I started to understand a whole lot of class or even guild warfare stuff from the past when I start to see what happens when skilled workers start to scheme for their gain against the common good. I also don't just accept unions as being good for everyone anymore for the same reason.
The sad reality is that skilled workers are just like the hot waitress index. When the economy is bad, it's a lot easier to get the cream of the crop for those who still have money. The fact that everything is still somehow decent for a few more months is exactly why it's insanely difficult to source any kind of labor for a reasonable price. Since no one can source this labor, they simply don't and do without.
Shit stayed open late during the recession. Good thing Trump is trying his hardest to put us into another one right now.
It's called "what the market can bear" and it's what corporations with marketing and sales professionals have always tried their best to do; charge as much as you possibly can without losing business. Of course, it only actually works when there is competition, and so the rising prices are kept in check by undercutting competition.... and then, _that_ only works when the undercutting competition is working to the same quality (by a code, ideally) and is subject to the same economic pressures so that it can level out fairly. If the competition is all fresh immigrants with lower CoL, or if the competition is cutting corners, all bets are off. You end up with a race to the bottom, where each individual is trying to be part of a race to the top at the same time... everyone wants more than they're worth, but those who are actually doing the best work still aren't getting what they deserve, lol!
A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work, just like any other freedom. It's always been strange to me that Americanism seems to view freedom as the fundamental condition of man, hampered by law; ultimately most freedoms come from rule and order, because they can carve out space for one to enjoy freedoms with far fewer negative consequences.
> A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work
While I am not a free market absolutist, I think your assertion is based on judging negative outcomes of a free market vs the positive intentions of regulations trying to prevent those negative outcomes, i.e. you’re not considering the negative outcomes of regulations. I don’t think any free market advocate would state categorically that they produce perfect results, merely that any attempt to prevent certain negative outcomes through law will produce different negative outcomes elsewhere.
For instance regulations tend to incentivize very large corporations to advocate for more regulation as it raises the barrier to new competition entering the market place. Another example would be over burdensome regulations that slow the production of housing which constrains supply and prices a lot of people out of the market. I would have loved to take public transit where I lived a few years ago, but they spent a decade on environmental impact studies while traffic and the environmental impact from it got significantly worse.
There’s also a time component where the effects of regulations can take decades or even generations to really play out, but people tend to only remember the well-meaning goal of the regulation if they remember it at all. This tends to be very beneficial for politicians who end up being judged not on outcomes, but intentions.
I think you missed the parent comment’s point. They are not saying that a free market had it’s downsides, but rather that a lassaiz-faire approach often does not even result in a free market, but rather in a market that tends towards monopolization. And a market without competition is not free.
In order to have free, competitive markets, you need to have a referee to enforce a common set of rules, like antitrust.
Thanks, that's a very succinct way of putting my original idea.
It was well put in (one of the) the ending(s) of Evangelion, where the protagonist Shinji learns that gravity, a constraint that removes a degree of freedom, also gives him freedom by providing a surface upon which he can walk; without the constraint, he would actually be less free.
Sorry for the double reply but I think a concrete example might elucidate what I am discussing.
I have had to deal with close friends being addicted to heroin. I believe the free market is harmful when it comes to hard drugs because of my experiences. I am all for the complete ban of these hard drugs. However, that does not mean no one will OD on heroin even though it is banned. Such a law will create a black market, crime due to its illicit nature, incentivize horrific cartels to smuggle it into the country, and cost a lot of tax money to enforce. These are all negative outcomes from legislation whose goal is to prevent people from having access to heroin. I think this trade-off is worth it personally although some would disagree. The point is I’m not comparing the negative outcomes of hard drug use to the intentions of “fixing” it through legislation. Rather I am comparing outcomes to outcomes because there are some serious downsides to such a policy solution.
I have also lost a friend to heroin (well, probably fent... it was the early days of that, and we suspect that nobody knew how to dose properly...) and so I appreciate your tangent.
One of the things we've learned up here in Canada over the last couple decades is the need to understand that some people just cannot be sober. They will not be, and they will do anything to not be, ranging from the familiar drugs to whatever they can find (gasoline, inhalants, etc). Obviously, there are worse and better choices in this range of options, and there are more and less self destructive outcomes. Harm reduction has become a key strategy; what can we do that will help keep these people from hurting themselves and others?
We've achieved some manner of success helping prevent people from OD'ing, getting needle-transmitted drugs, etc. which helps them and helps all of us at large (in the most utilitarian sense, it keeps social healthcare costs lower). What we've failed at is preventing them from hurting others, unfortunately.
In the long run, I think that what we're going to need is better drugs. We have to find something that makes people feel as good as they need to feel, without all the massively negative side effects of heroin, meth, etc. that result in wrecked lives. Healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry should seriously be looking at it this way; not just working on antidepressants and other clinical meds that are trying to get people to a stable "normal", but drugs that actually make you feel good so that they can displace heroin / fentanyl, without the downsides.
Yes, we would still see people addicted to that.... <sips coffee> <watches guy across the street smoking>
I didn’t miss their point, I challenged the foundation upon which it rested.
You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly. Even if I take this as a fact for the sake of argument, it doesn’t nullify my point that judging the intention of political action (antitrust laws to prevent monopolies) against the outcomes of a system (free markets devolve into monopolies) is comparing apples to oranges. You must judge the outcomes of both systems. As I stated in my original reply, regulations can actually lead to monopolies, so the outcomes matter a lot more than their good intentions.
If I don’t take your assertion as a fact though[1], then what you’re doing is judging what you believe to be the outcome of a free market with what you believe will prevent that through legislation. This is entirely too theoretical and doesn’t even begin to answer which is a better system. Ultimately we need to understand the actual trade-offs that are being made between these systems in order to select the system with the most desirable characteristics.
[1] It is not at all proven that a free market will naturally devolve into a monopoly. This has been a contentious debate in economics for centuries and is absolutely not resolved. People tend to assume a static market and extrapolate into the infinite future, e.g. if a horse drawn carriage manufacturer has 99% market share then will it forever be a monopoly in a broken system or will a fledgling automotive industry dethrone this “monopoly” with a better alternative that is not even a direct competitor? This is a really, really deep subject in either case.
> It is not at all proven that a free market will naturally devolve into a monopoly.
I think it comes down to the category of item being offered in the market. Some things naturally lend themselves to monopolies; it feels like perhaps it's based on factors like the difficulty of entering the market with a new product at all, the amount of coordination and manpower required to field it, and the cost efficiencies of having a singular producer vs. many.
There are certainly cases where we see duopolies or triopolies etc. where one really-well-run company might be more efficient, from a labour standpoint; but then, in turn, we all benefit from having a redundant array of supply chains.
There are other cases where we absolutely want a monopoly, such as with policing, or (in many countries) with healthcare, because they apply to everyone and being a consumer of the service is not exactly optional.
> You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly.
No, I am not asserting that.
I think the first thing to clear up is our definitions. My main point would be that a market that is controlled by a monopoly is not a free market. I would define a free market not as a market that is free from government interference, but a market in which all of the actors are free to participate on a fair competitive playing field.
I think that lassaiz-faire, with the meaning of "hands off" may be a more precise way to describe what you are saying when you say "free market".
I think that a fair competitive landscape is ultimately what we want out of markets. I agree that it is bad when government actions interfere with a fair competitive landscape. But it is not inevitable that all goverment actions will do that, and in many cases government action can help rather than hurt. And similarly, plenty of actions by non-government actors can interfere with a fair competitive landscape as well.
> a market that is controlled by a monopoly is not a free market.
In other words, the thing you are talking about _does not exist_ except in libertarian fantasies. Without a government (the monopoly on force in a region, that controls the markets within) providing the backbone for this - i.e. with features such as courts, police, mint - there is no freedom, because an aggrieved party has no recourse other than violence.
It’s a supply and demand problem. There are just not enough people pursuing these jobs to replace the retiring generation. Some of these small family businesses are quite profitable, but most owners don’t have kids interested in continuing their legacy. Private equity noticed this and went on an acquisition spree. They buy your local HVAC and plumbing company, keep the family-owned branding “since 1976”, hire people with no experience to do the job and increase the hourly rate. They recover the investment, squeeze out every dollar they can and shut it down once bad Google reviews and lawsuits start to creep in.
Recent experience: called a HVAC contractor to fix a heating furnace, they spent 1 hour convincing us to scrap the current furnace and install a new one; once we told him "no" at least 10 times, he spent 30 minutes "diagnosing" the problem while on the phone with somebody with technical knowledge; then he quoted $250 to replace a part that I could buy on Ebay for $15. Finally, I bought the part and replaced it myself.
I understand being annoyed at a sales pitch, but this sounds like about 3-4 hours of work for the contractor, which comes out to about $80/hour. That doesn’t sound so unreasonable to me.
Sorry, I skipped some details. They had a pre-agreed $180 "diagnostics fee", which we paid, then they tried to charge $250 on top of that for the part. The contractor had no technical knowledge and kept video-conferencing the office for help. He had lots of sales training, though.
I know a lot of shops that hire good mechanics though if you want to get some work done on your car that requires difficult diagnostics often you have to wait days or weeks to get the attention of someone who can get it done.
After reading Chris Beasley's blog about trying to build a castle in Chattanooga (linked here on HN a while ago), I have unfortunately started to agree with this sentiment a bit.
There's too much of collective bargaining and scheming for increased prices going on in a lot of markets is what it looks like.
Hunting around for people and apparently they started texting each other stuff like "He said it was $100,000 higher than, you don't leave that money on the table."
Quotes started at $6/sq. ft, then became $6.5/sq. ft. Those people left. Became $15/sq. ft, and $23/sq. ft. It seemed like people saw a big money project, and started collectively trying to milk it for everything they could. [1]
Entire project was that way. Had thefts of a tractor, cement mixer, and small tools. Could not get people to give honest or correct bids on fencing. And 30 banks skipped on financing. Parts of the blog are depressing, yet the castle got finished, and its kind of a bleak laugh to read some of the stuff.
My father worked on a Natural Gas exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles as an emergency substitute when a contractor flaked. There was an oven that had a handle, when you opened it the narration said "don't open the oven during cooking" to save energy. Kids hung off this and immediately broke it, they replaced it with steel and it was broken the next day, then ended up having to put a Triangular metal piece that couldn't be hung off of because children are wild animals.
This museum prior to the rebuild into the California Science Center (which I love but is just different) and the Exploratorium were amazing experiences for this as a kid.
I miss the big kinetic scuplture of rolling wood balls through the electricity exhibit, the plotter that would draw out your bicycle design, the next door room full of electronic interactives of the kind that he's complaining about but early 90s style. The weird chrome McDonalds left over from the 84 Olympics. The giant ceiling mounted helmet VR exhibit (crt, no doubt)
I wish I could find better photos, there's so few.
Went to the Frost Museum of Science in Miami. They had this big (6ft x 6ft) video display and four 6-inch diameter track balls where you guided a vessel through the virtual ocean or something. These two academic minded parents asked their sons (maybe 8 and 10 years old) to try the exhibit. They ran over excitely and just started pounding on the track balls with their fists as hard as they could. They of course did not understand the exhibit at all, but they had a great time! :-)
As a parent with one of those kids, you never know which mode they will start off with, even with the right prompting. And yes, you correct them and steer them in the right direction and hope they will eventually learn how to behave.
One can question. It's a difficult reality sometimes though. Children have minds and bodies of their own. They mature at different rates.
Outside of taking care of a child's physiological needs, their parents are providing a small proportion of the inputs which go into a child's system of being. Peers, teachers, elder family, media, the economic system [and it's insatiable desire for consumers and tools to leverage the consumers], all conspire to forward agenda that often don't align with and support being a good citizen.
As a parent of more than a few kids of my own, I can say from my experience that even if you raise them all the same, some kids will understand and behave exactly the way I would hope—full of wonder and reverence—and others will act the goat, over and over. Some kids are different than others. Even in the same family. I can only imagine how much the difference might be from one family to another—even if all the parents make sure they have been told and understand why they are at those museums or libraries.
Also, I’ve been using the em-dash since the late 90s.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Being told, understanding, and choosing to behave well are not perfectly correlated. They will choose their actions for themselves. Of course you don't allow them to continue acting that way and over the course of time try to raise responsible adults.
Ha! Yep, I question my parenting every day. Every kid is different, so yes, this is one of many norms. Before I had kids I believed as you do, but believe you me, every kid is different even inside the womb.
Luckily, those track balls were rock solid and no worse for wear. The parents were very well intentioned and attentive and did quickly redirect the kids. But it was hilarious to see how much fun they were having before the parents stepped in. Like I bet they'll have great memories of the museum visit.
Yup. Tim Hunkin went for a last look around his Secret Life of the Home exhibition¹ at the London Science Museum and quite a few things were out of order; this may be because the exhibit was imminently closing, but my impression is that that's just the deal with mechanical exhibits - they break more often than the digital ones. Very likely it's one reason the screens are at the forefront.
Similar thing at This Museum is (Not) Obsolete, in Ramsgate. Just so many things that can go wrong that you expect not everything will be working on your particular visit.
Ah, it's been "modernized". I like that museum. But you had to know the history of technology to appreciate it. There's Maudslay's lathe! Now it's been dumbed down.
I think the Hunkin exhibit really did look a bit tired - I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to try something else. After all, Secret Life only got its chance because they were willing to change something back then.
If you like Tim's stuff you can always catch his Novelty Automation arcade over by Holborn. Highly recommended by me at least!
I don't know how good the information transfer was at the London Science Museum way back when I was a kid; I remember excitedly spinning all the little brass handles and pushing the brass buttons on various teak cased devices, but I'm not sure I took much science home with me. Sci Fi, a home computer, and (much later) Bill Bryson's book informed me far more.
Yes, but this is the core of what they're offering. As the son of a science museum director, I've seen exactly what it takes to keep hands on science exhibits going. I agree with the article here, although I think it's appropriate to have some screens if required for an exhibit (e.g. a thermal imaging system)
"I didn't bring my niece to a museum to look at a screen..."
I took my niece around the Natural History Museum in London recently, taking in the new 'Darwin' extension first. It was a liminal space of sorts with lots of broken screens. The tech had not been updated in a decade or more so you had Adobe Flash Player running, complete with the crash pop-up messages to let you know what version of Flash they were updated to.
The idea generally was to have a large touch table with a projector in the ceiling showing an image that could be interacted with. My 8 year old crash test dummy still enjoyed the screens, which was no surprise given that she is addicted to her tablet.
The touch table (however it worked) was not quite registered to the image projected on it. Some exhibits (screens) had a 'tell a friend' feature where you could enter an email address. However, all of the 'keys' were off, so you press 'Q' and you get 'W', or 'N' and you get 'M'. I persisted and entered my sister's email address.
Did she get the email?
What do you think!!!
Some of the screens had the toughest armour I have ever seen. ATMs are soft targets by comparison. I had never seen whole keyboards made of stainless steel before and found the level of vandal-proofing to be absurd.
Admittedly the throughput of the museum is absurd, in the UK every person gets to go there at least five times, once with mum and dad, another time with one set of grandparents, then with the school, then, as they have their own kids, they have to go again, then it is rinse/repeat when they are a grandparent.
The reason for going is dinosaurs. But they got rid of 'dippy' from the entrance hall.
Before you get to the entrance hall there is the begging chicane. This is a ridiculous entrance route back and fore between a dozen different begging bowls to support them financially. If you choose not to pay up, then you can then spend the next six hours not speaking or interacting with any humans apart from the ones you arrived with, except for maybe at the giftshop.
There were no annexes with staff doing talks, nobody apart from the beggars to greet you, but plenty of screens.
The brief for the new wing was to have scientists doing classification of specimens in such a way that they were on show, a 'working museum'. But nobody wanted to work in goldfish bowl conditions under the gaze of hordes of kids.
I don't want to dismiss the place in its entirety, the gardens outside were lovely even though they have a motorway-sized road next to you with considerable noise pollution. That's right, the place we send all our kids to for the big memorable day is made toxic with the filth of car dependency. The air is utterly disgusting there just because of car dependency. The whole area is full of museums and the whole lot needs to just be pedestrianised, but no, it is clogged up with those cheesy 'status symbol' cars people buy in London.
So there is this wall of cars outside and this wall of screens inside. Then the daylight robbery in the gift shop.
We didn't do the full tour, got to save some for the parents and school trip. But we did go to the earthquake room. It is modelled on a Japanese shop and shakes every few minutes. Shakes is being kind. A garden swing or any wheeled vehicle does a better simulation, clearly the hydraulics have lost some of their zest.
The 'climate change' room was also a little off. Maybe this is a leftover from when they had the likes of BP sponsor the place.
I was not going to let anything spoil my perfect day out with my niece, so I wasn't miserable about the place when I was there. However, on reflection, the dilapidation was a glimpse of the future, a future where museums have screens to interact with but no staff to interact with.
I think you're mistaken if you got the impression that the museum once had guides. This isn't a recent trend, so far as I know it's been delightfully free from tour guides since 1881.
You had to buy tickets prior to 2001, so that's changed. (Was entry free in its early history too? Not sure.) That used to be your greeting, the ticket desk.
They had an earthquake machine in 1985, it must be the same one.
I didn't think that they would have guides, it was just odd to go into a city of millions and spend all day surrounded by people yet not have any need to share words with anyone for any reason whatsoever.
The NHM is free to enter, some special exhibitions charge for entry and I think some require free booking to manage crowds. There is a very strong encouragement to make a donation though.
As a tangent, I find it a bit annoying that so many UK museums advertise free pretty aggressively and then provide such "very strong encouragement" as you put it to attend. Mind you, there's less direct pressure than there is in some places. The Met in NYC used to have an optional but not really optional policy for museum admission as you got your pin though it now not optional at all for non-NYC residents.
At least they're honest about it. (Though the suggested donations at "free" museums are usually pretty reasonable.) I'm not sure big city museums in the US are especially cheap either.
Free to enter since 2001. Which means now they have (more) donation boxes.
My local museum started charging for entry a few years ago, along with a refurbishment, new exhibits, a bigger gift shop and a push to attract more tourists. So now it's horrible. I'm not sure what the unifying mistake is in both models, free entry and ticketed. I think the error might be in trying to serve the public.
To be fair, that's what I remember children's museums being like in the 1980s as well. A significant number of exhibits would be temporarily out of order on any given day.
I don't think screens are responsible for that. Maintaining physical exhibits that can survive constant physical contact with kids is hard.