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Futurist Friday: My Mind to Your Mind

While we are not ready for the Vulcan Mind Meld (yet), researchers are already making great leaps in brain-to-computer interfaces. Now scientists are beginning to play with brain-to-brain communications. Recent experiments include: fitting …

Throwback Thursday: the Coming Dementia Epidemic

This past Tuesday, Lisa Eriksen blogged about museum programs for people with dementia and how staff address the thorny challenge shifting focus from impact to engagement, and assessing programs that explicitly do not expect to impart new …

Older Adults and Programming for People with Dementia

I’ve been planning a workshop for the Alliance’s Accreditation Commission, helping them explore evaluation programs that focus on impact, and how that may translate to our field. Bill Gates’ blithely sets numeric goals for eliminating …

Monday Musing: Up Periscope

The week before last I took a tour of the British Museum’s “Defining Beauty” exhibit, hosted by historian Dan Snow (who has a gorgeously plummy accent. Bonus). I did this while pacing the corridors of AAM, channeling Dan …

Futurist Friday: A Plug for Reading Science Fiction

Rather meta–today’s Futurist Friday is about why you should read (good) science fiction for a glimpse of realistic futures. This 8 minute video from PBS Digital Studios includes clips and quotes from many of the greats, notably …

Museums and Social Justice: Supporting Self-Assessment

In a guest post here on the blog earlier this week, Nina Pelaez and Alyssa Greenberg reported on the self-organized convening of Museum Workers Speak at the AAM annual meeting in Atlanta a few weeks ago, where attendees addressed issues of …

The Future of Museums

“I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action, over a life of consumption. Rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to produce and consume–a style of life which is merely a way …

Unsafe Ideas: Building Museum Worker Solidarity for Social Justice

I was very disappointed to miss the “rogue session” at the AAM meeting in Atlanta dedicated to museum labor practices. It is, as readers of this blog know, an issue of intense interest to me, and to our field. Fortunately, two of the …

Monday Musing: Fighting for Diversity and Against Unconscious Bias

Two articles for my quick Monday thought:This depressing article from the NYTimes by a researcher who has been documenting how selection criteria in corporate America suppress diversity. He finds that the practices of selecting applicants …

Futurist Friday: The Digital Panopticon

Who saw you on your way to work today? Even if you didn’t see a soul, chances are, no matter where you live and work, someone did, or could, spot you, via one or more cameras monitoring intersections, store fronts, schools (not to …

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