TrendsWatch – Page 3 – American Alliance of Museums

Monday Message to CFM’s Followers

By Elizabeth Merritt

Happy Monday, peeps. We’ve quietly “soft launched” this year’s TrendsWatch report on the Alliance web site. I’ll be posting a longer introduction later this week, but I wanted to send this early …
Happiness: Because you get what you measure

By Elizabeth Merritt

“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.” —Robert F. Kennedy Humans are driven to succeed, so we mold our behavior to fit our definition of …
Labor 3.0: new jobs, or a jobless future?

By Elizabeth Merritt

“The issue is jobs. You can’t get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket, and feeling like somebody.”—Studs Terkel In the last two centuries, labor pivoted from the farm and workshop to the factory and the office. Now, as …
More Than Human: extending the spectrum of ability

By Elizabeth Merritt

“If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of who I am.”—Temple Grandin The year 2015 marked the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which banned discrimination against people …
Me/We/Here/There: museums and the matrix of place-based augmented devices

By Elizabeth Merritt

“It turns out that the killer application for virtual reality is other human beings. Build a world that people want to inhabit, and the inhabitants will come.” —Charles Stross Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are portals to …
Futurist Friday: Five Years of Forecasting

By Elizabeth Merritt

About 4,000 people a year download TrendsWatch—CFM’s annual forecasting report–as a free PDF. But we print a couple thousand physical copies each year as well. Some people prefer to go off-line for their reading, enjoy …
Futurist Friday: Coming this Fall, the First Cyborg Olympics

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of the themes I explore in TrendsWatch 2016 is the blurring boundaries between ability, disability and augmented ability. We are experiencing a surge in “assistive technology” that can compensate for physical impairments …
Tools for Exploring the Future

By Elizabeth Merritt

This post is one of a series highlighting insights, recommendations and resources from TrendsWatch 2016, the latest edition of CFM’s annual forecasting report. Download your free PDF copy here. It may provoke some giggles that …
Capture the Flag: the struggle over identity and representation

By Elizabeth Merritt

#TrendsWatch 2016, artist @GynoStar @BreeNewsome #TakeDownTheFlag Follow the link in the photo caption to the associated story. You can find more glimpses of the future (and links) on CFM’s Pintere…
Introducing TrendsWatch 2016

By Elizabeth Merritt

TrendsWatch 2016 is now up on the web! You can download your free PDF copy from the Alliance website. (Print copies will be available later this spring from the AAM Bookstore.) Here are the chapters in this year’s report: Labor 3.0: new …