International Trends in Museum Interpretation of Technology and Labor

Abstract

Museums have collected machines for nearly as long as they have been con structed, allowing only for the interval generally required to permit the objects to change from novel to old, quaint, or antique. As artifacts, they were at least stored, at most revered. If interpreted, they tended to be seen as part of a con tinuum of change, most often as progress. Broader import, in cluding relationships to those who worked with the machines, rarely intruded. A collected machine is generally the oldest or most revolutionary, a super lative attachable to it being the sine qua non of determining worthiness. Exhib its, if any, show how it works or why it is unusual. They make it seem impor tant (as does the fact it is in a museum in the first place), productive, isolated, independent of most value systems, yet somehow good. I would argue that such practices are demeaning to the potential meaning and significance of artifacts, as well as condescending or insulting to the museum audience. They ignore the most important aspect of technology, its impact on the people to whom it relates, both producers and consumers. Fur thermore, such an approach ignores the most basic factor in directing the crea tion of a given technology: its purpose. The political significance of traditional museum practice is plain: collecting technological artifacts announces their importance; displaying them as the works of great inventors advances the great man theory of history. Attention to the parallel accomplishments of women extends, rather than solves, the prob lem; it does not redefine the debate. What is needed is a different use or interpre tation of technology, a different history, not a fuller rendition of the old one. Even the great person theory of history follows too small a group, ignores the masses of men and women directly and indirectly affected by technology, and thereby claims their stories are unimportant. Such collections and exhibits preach heroic individualism, defend the exploitation of labor which accompa nies it, and mythify the degradation of labor at which it aims. They endorse without discussion technologies aimed at labor-cheapening machinery, a dehu manizing technology. For example, while robotics might be displayed, there would be no discussion of the fact that a company would not buy a robot cap able of more functions than it needs, but conversely will take a human and de