Object Explorer.

Abstract

Object Explorer Elaine LaFay Science History Institute, 315 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19106 https://www.sciencehistory.org/ The Object Explorer, a digital interactive exhibit at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, wants visitors to think differently about technologies. The more ordinary the technology in question, the better. Using eight objects deemed familiar and everyday—rubber flip flop, ice cube tray, LED light bulb, oven mitt, birth control compact, soda bottle, measuring cup, syringe—the Object Explorer invites visitors to consider them anew and see these seemingly banal items as windows into the massive sociotechnical transformations of daily life in the modern era. The Object Explorer sits squarely in the first room of the museum, greeting visitors as soon as they walk in the door. The exhibit consists of two high-resolution display tables attached to a two-story high column that rotates through featured videos and images. Here’s how it works: Viewers place 3D plastic models of everyday objects on clearly marked “touch points” on the display table to prompt interactive media displays related to that object. Each object triggers a “story pathway” that expands into roughly chronological explorations of the object’s material, social, and environmental history. Viewers move the object along the pathways, which consist of interactive prompts along three interrelated themes: historical context, technological development, and use. The exhibit is a curious artifact itself, as museums are generally no-touch zones, but developers took pains to clearly render the Object Explorer a space of interaction. The 3D models are an inviting, synthetic yellow, and sit haphazardly on the table between uses. Images of primary sources are always in motion: appearing and disappearing across the table, darting to where 3D models sit and then back out again. Users can tap an image to enlarge it and learn more, or they can follow along a multipart story pathway. This creative setup invites visitors to look at ordinary, commonplace things from several different angles. It asks users to think big: the flip flop pathway expands into an abridged history of rubber; out of a squat model of a faucet unfolds the history of water management, filtration, and sanitation over 150 years. The story of the birth control compact considers not only the technology of the compact itself (derived from product engineer David Wagner watching his wife Doris manage her birth control pills in the 1960s), but further situates it within the history of hormones and endocrine system interventions more broadly. Beginning with epinephrine in 1901, the discussion includes the ways in which hormones “can help a person realize their identity,” as in gender-affirming hormone treatments. [End Page 176] The Object Explorer deftly elides traps that plague many public displays of the history of medicine, avoiding triumphalist narratives and isolated stories of discovery. Its creators were more inclined toward the complicated “mixed legacies” of an array of technologies that are grounded in social and cultural analysis. The oven mitt, which leads viewers into a study of asbestos, is a particularly striking example. The oven mitt pathway complicates simplistic stories of invisible harms and toxic hazards by reminding audiences that nineteenth-century manufacturers saw asbestos as a miraculously fire-resistant substance—a prized quality in an era when rapid industrialization, dense populations, and wooden structures made cities vulnerable to uncontrollable fires. The pathway concludes by drawing parallels between asbestos and other “risky natures” like carbon dioxide, allergens, and even sunlight, each of which carry twin benefits and harms. The exhibit ranges broadly while maintaining thematic cohesion around the complicated legacies and risks associated with each object over time. Lead pipes, which nineteenth-century engineers preferred for their durable, flexible qualities, have similarly fraught histories. Invoking the Flint Water Crisis, the lead pipe pathway argues that “unequal exposure” to lead puts people of color and those in poverty at higher risk, though it stops short of invoking environmental racism specifically. The exhibit asks viewers to reflect on other persistent chemicals like mercury, arsenic, and pesticides that linger in the environment long after use, often with serious adverse health effects. A corn cob leads viewers to a story of BT corn, pesticides, bioengineering, and synthetic insulin. The ice cube tray? A history...