Seeing his description about the early visits when he was a child reminded me of the City Museum in St Louis.

Kid sized interactive art museum. A place I wish were around when I was grade school age.

Absolute irony: Pittsburgh has a privately-owned museum of computers (actually in New Kensington, a suburb). A HUGE amount of big old boxes. PDPs, Cray, some early home computers and printers. Some have been actively used by the owner/maintainer, so we know they work.

But there's no digital displays. There are screens - that are off.

The owner can barely make rent, even in that desolated section of real estate, so there's not going to be any snappy big screens or interactive software. But it's literally a museum of computers where no computers are computing.

What I don't understand is why science museums aren't more geared toward adults. For me, it's hard to tell the difference between a children's museum and a science museum.

Feels like you could write the same article about theme parks nowadays too. Okay, there are still a fair few physical attractions there, but the likes of Universal Studios were infamous for having 'rollercoaster' like rides which were just simulators on a screen rather than relying on physical scenery, animatronics, etc.

Feels like there's a lot of attempts to integrate smartphones into the parks too, like through activities that involve using a mobile app instead of a physical prop or console.

I generally agree with the thesis of the blog post.

I'd like to add that I feel frustrated when try out a screen at a museum and it not working (malfunctioning). I have been to NASA's Kennedy's Space Center (KSC) many times (like 5-6). Although they have got most of the exhibits working in good order, some of them are broken or not functioning well anymore. I still appreciate KSC (am an annual member), but I wish there is some philanthropist or the government fund to renovate these museums periodically...

The Franklin Institute was in dire straits during COVID (as many similar institutions were), but has by all accounts recovered nicely financially. It felt pretty dumpy the last few times I've been there, with broken exhibits and the aforementioned screen-based exhibits. Hopefully they'll loosen those purse-strings eventually and put some money into the more expensive but much more tactile physical exhibits that had always been one of their big strengths.

Reminds me of the Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum I went to a few times as a kid. Some of my fondest memories of any museum or other similar activity are there. There were countless things to do and when I was young there were no screens to be had. I would be curious to go check it out and see if they are still following the same sort of idea or if they have fallen victim to the popularization of the screen.

The franklin institute hosted yearly robot fights for a long time, which I was going to present as evidence that they aren't completely screen-pilled but it looks like that has ended sometime in the last 5 years. It's a shame- I competed one year and it was an all time favorite museum experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-vmSDgnlbg

In the UK it comes off the back of "decolonize this" and "imperialism bad that".

Frankly I'm fed up of it over here and it's a shame this is being replicated in countries built a lot more strongly on actual modern scientific progress.

There's plenty of affordable interactive exhibits (the cost of crayons and paper hasn't inflated that much since the 90s!), but there's this false b$ that interactive digital media or 3d VR wish-wash is what people want. This mostly comes from asking the wrong people, the great unwashed who you were never going to attract away from the latest Disney flop.

As is being played out en-masse within hollywood and the wider entertainment industry. Ask the people who were your strongest supporters and original fans what they liked about your thing and you'll cut through all the noise and know where your priorities should be. Stop tyring to please everyone and focus on doing what you do well, growth and expansion numbers are good for one place the valley, and lets look where that got social media...

> I remember running through the gigantic model heart with other kids.

This is one of the most memorable exhibits in TFI and thankfully still exists today.