Cone Of Plausibility – American Alliance of Museums

Revisiting the Future of Museums in the New Gilded Age

By Elizabeth Merritt

I recently reread a 2011 post by my former colleague Erik Ledbetter on the effect the “New Gilded Age” may have on museums. He wrote “The decline of the middle class and the reemergence of a true American plutocracy will …
Futurist Friday: Alt History & Alt Futures

By Elizabeth Merritt

Ever wonder how the present would be different, if some some key event in our past had torqued just enough to propel us into a different sector of the Cone of Plausibility? Exploring such scenarios is the realm of “alternative …
Questioning Assumptions: The Ideal Employee:Volunteer Ratio

By Elizabeth Merritt

Today’s thought experiment: what if, in the future, museums asked not “how many volunteers do we need” but rather “how can we structure our operations to engage as many volunteers as possible in meaningful work?” Volunteers are already …
Futures Studies 101: Implications Wheel

By Elizabeth Merritt

What would happen if a space craft full of weak, disoriented insectoid aliens parked itself in orbit over South Africa? The implications of that (highly) improbable event are explored the 2009 film District 9. The director posits humans …
Futurist Friday: Exploring the Cone of Plausibility

By Elizabeth Merritt

Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961 Today’s recommendation: read this interview for Big Think in which Dr. Michio Kaku …
Futurist Friday: Past Visions of the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Meet Matt Novak. Matt is a self-identified “accidental expert” on past visions of the future, and oversees the Paleofuture blog—an online archive of materials related to retro-futurism. Paleofuture explores “the past that never was.” Why …
Forecasting the Next Educational Era

By Elizabeth Merritt

As I wrote last week one of CFM’s foci in 2011 and 2012 (and probably beyond) will be the future of education. You’ve told us in workshops, correspondence and in feedback to this blog that the trends shaping American education will have a …
Where Might the Boston PILOT lead us?

By Elizabeth Merritt

When I leading forecasting exercises, helping people to question assumptions and imagine alternate futures, one scenario that participants repeatedly create is one in which museums no longer have nonprofit status. Why does it come up so …
Future Studies 101: Potential Futures

By Elizabeth Merritt

This is part two in a series of short essays exploring the basics of Futures Studies and how they can be applied to the museum field. Read part one here. Studying the future isn’t all that different from studying history. We start with …
The Pinky Show Cats’ Report on the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

“We, three cats from the Pinky Show, went to the future. We brought back notes & stuff.” Read the report . Those of you who attended the AAM annual meeting this spring may have stumbled upon a curious exhibit in MuseumExpo—a set of …