Recommended Reading – Page 7 – American Alliance of Museums

Futurist Friday: Apocalypse for One

By Elizabeth Merritt

Yesterday Stuart Candy, on his Skeptical Futuryst Blog, drew readers’ attention to a dark, elaborate scenario that played out on UK television last year. “Derren Brown: Apocalypse” is a two-part special that Candy …
A Few Optimistic Futures

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’m working on a couple scenarios on the future of education to share during Museums Advocacy Day training next Monday. This exercise reminded me yet again how easy it is to “go dark” when imagining potential futures. Maybe I’m just a …
Learning from the Labrary

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’m rushing to meet my editor’s deadline for the text of TrendsWatch 2013 (spoiler alert: it’s about the future) so today I’m just jotting down some quick thoughts on an item in the news. (As Pogo’s Churchy la Femme might say, …
Futurist Friday: Remixing the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

Easy assignment this week: devote 3 minutes and 24 seconds to a lightning tour of future visions expressed in film, remixed by Eclectic Method. Phil found this video via the LIS (Library and Information Science) Blog, and a link in …
Monday Musings: the Importance of Storytelling (and what museums and e-commerce have in common)

By Elizabeth Merritt

I launched Monday Musings last week as a way of sharing intriguing things I spot on the Web that deserve more than a tweet, but about which I’m not ready to pull together my thoughts for a full length post. I set myself a 15 minute time …
Picturing the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’ve shared a number of scenarios on this blog, mostly in the form of short stories envisioning potential futures. But written scenarios have their limitations. Words are specific—the reader can only build out the story, explore the …
September Suggestions: Spice up your Scanning

By Elizabeth Merritt

Time to reinforce my relentless message: even when it seems like a guilty pleasure or a waste of time, you should carve out space each day to study a least one short piece of news, read a blog post, or watch a video that is not directly …
Scanning for Political Futures

By Elizabeth Merritt

Though I’ve worked in D.C. for over ten years, I know very little about politics. I’m a biologist by training. My colleague and partner-in-scanning, Phil Katz, is a historian. This inevitably shapes our reading, if only because we …
Futurist Friday: The Rosetta Project

By Elizabeth Merritt

Pop Quiz. Q #1: How long do you want your museum’s collections to last? r50 years r100 years r 500 years r1000 years r > 1000 years Q #2: what is your museum doing to meet that goal? (Use the comment section, below, if you want …
On Stories, and Authenticity

By Elizabeth Merritt

I just got my copy of the new book Significant Objects documenting a fascinating project exploring the relationship between objects, stories and value. Synopsis: Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker collected inexpensive, tag-sale objects (e.g., a …