Sustainability and Post-Digital Culture

Nick PooleCEO, Collections Trust

Making sure there are museums 10 years from now

Nick PooleCEO, Collections Trust

Sustainability is…doing something useful, well

‘Post-digital culture’ is...a phrase I deeply regret

‘Post-digital culture’ is what happens when…

...we forget the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’

...We stop leading ‘digital lives’ and just have ‘lives’

…There’s no ‘digital literacy’, just ‘literacy’

…When ‘preservation’ means ‘digital preservation’

Sustainability in a post-digital culture means doing something useful for the way people live their lives now, and doing it well.

Thank you, and goodnight!

In some parts of the world, museums are suffering…

20% of UK museums are seeing cuts of 25% or more

60% are reducing public programmes as a result of cuts

20-40% cuts in Local arts funding in the Netherlands

While elsewhere, museums are thriving!

More than 300 new museums in Taiwan in the past 12 years

€108m Louvre Abu Dhabi development

“More assertive new and emerging nations will develop new museums.

New elites, new middle classes, new financing capabilities, new ambitions and the will for promoting national identities will appear.”

Mr Jacques AttaliePresident

European Bank for Recovery and Development

In many places, Governments are using the instability of Western economies to restructure the role of the state in funding public services

For culture, this means the erosion of the principle of taxpayer-funded cultural provision as a public good to be replaced by a culture of paid access, commercial development and philanthropy.

(In many societies, this is the norm!)

These factors are conspiring to aggravate the existing culture of competition for cultural heritage.

Competing for…

Mindshare…Tourist spend…Leisure time

But sustainability is more than simple economic competitive advantage…

Sustainability = Resilience = Relevance

The oldest museum in evidence was Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, dating from c. 530 BCE and devoted to Mesopotamian antiquities

The core purpose of cultural institutions, to collect, to interpret and to present, has remained the same ever since, but the way they do it has changed every 100 years or so to reflect the changing needs and priorities of peoples lives….

Now it is time to change again.

A bit of time travel…

The rise of the sensor….

The Copenhagen Wheel concept transforms ordinary bicycles into mobile sensing units that can map pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time.

As a person cycles, the wheel’s sensing unit captures their effort level and information about immediate surroundings, including: road conditions, carbon monoxide, NOx, noise, ambient temperature and relative humidity.

Riders can access this data through their phone and even share the information with their community, contributing to a dynamic database of real-time environmental conditions.

Source: PSFK.com

French technology company, Sensaris, has developed a wearable device that monitors environmental conditions for its user. Sensors detect levels of air quality, noise, and humidity, mapping these alongside accelerometer and GPS data.

These devices are intended for use by groups of individuals looking to contribute to larger community oriented applications.

Next stop – smart fabrics which actively scrub pollutants from the atmosphere. Impact of one person is minimal, impact of 70,000 people could scrub 300 tonnes of CO2 a day.

Source: PSFK.com

The Quake-Catcher Network is a collaborative initiative out of Standford University for developing a low-cost strong-motion seismic network by utilizing the accelerometers in and attached to internet-connected computers. Participants simply download a free software that runs in the background, pinging a central server when they record tremors above a 4.0 magnitude.

The goal is to provide a better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to warning to schools, emergency response systems, and others.

Source: PSFK.com

Social sentiment….

There is a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Before visiting a clinic, many flu sufferers visit web sites for information about symptoms and remedies.

Google Flu Trends use these search queries to estimate current flu activity around the world in near real-time.

Source: PSFK.com

Using aggregated data about large-scale, or distributed activity to provide reasonably accurate predictive models of future behaviour patterns.

In this example, global data about patent submissions is used as part of a financial analysis model to inform strategic investment programmes.

Source: PSFK.com

A recent study by Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman has shown that Twitter can be used to forecast box-office revenue for movies.

By analyzing the rate at which movie-related tweets are generated, the researchers found they were able to predict box-office revenue more accurately than traditional methods.

Source: PSFK.com

Everything, everywhere….

GeoChat is a service for coordinating the efforts of different relief organizations. It lets team members interact to maintain shared geospatial awareness of who is doing what where—over any device, on any platform, over any network, using SMS, email, or a web browser.

Through this system, on-the-ground help can ensure an organized, rapid response following a crisis.

Source: PSFK.com

Patatat lets groups form information communities through text messages. Using a web browser, users enter a list of phone numbers, Patatat will then broadcast messages to the entire group via SMS.

When someone replies, these messages are also sent to everyone on the list, creating a reliable method for group communication.

Source: PSFK.com

The Swinglet CAM is a safe and easy-to-use flying camera that takes high-resolution pictures automatically—plus it can take off, fly and land all on its own. The drone can be programmed to follow a pre-determined flight path based on a maximum of 20 GPS coordinates with an operational range of up to 12.5 miles.

With simple drag & drop functions, it is possible to pre-program—as well as update during the flight—the position, altitude and behavior of the unmanned drone. In addition to mapping, potential applications include traffic updating, security, crop and species monitoring.

Source: PSFK.com

So many others…

LifecodingGenomicsGlobal health dataSmart buildingsSmart carsSmart everythingFarewell to cashRealtime visualisationHello, Brazil…Etc etc etc

A short list of the recently antiquated…

Writing a letterSending a faxUsing a phone boxRenting a videoProgramming a VCRWearing a watchOwning and using a clock radioWatching tellyBrowsing the Web

Sustainability is doing something useful, well

What does that look like for cultural heritage in a post-digital culture?

1. Literacy = facility + agency

2. Curatorship

3. Smart Collections

4. Refuge

We can stay where we are, and go to our deaths protecting the last iteration of what museums were for.

Or we can take our place in a post-digital culture.

Either way, we can’t go back.

Nick PooleCEOCollections Trust

@NickPoole1

Thx to @MiaRidge for the picture & ideas…