Prosumers. Seriously?
There is a vision, a bright shiny vision of a new future in which museums and their users become conspirators in the process of capturing, preserving and interpreting culture. These new museums will be open, democratic, agile and able to reflect the shifting patterns of life in contemporary society.
This vision is informed in part by the vocabulary of the Digital Revolution - a post-Web 2.0 vocabulary of ‘prosumers’ and ’perpetual beta’ which denotes a basic attitudinal shift in the process of producing and delivering services.
These new models, even where they don’t involve technology, are intrinsically connected to a technological world-view. A picture in which there are no barriers to entry, a Digital meritocracy where both tools and content are open to all to use, where you can go from idea to business to millionaire in the space of a week.
This picture is, of course, mythical. Ever since the 1950’s, technology has earned its keep by promising more than it is capable of, and the new era is no different. Although the code may be open-source, the community of people who are able to do anything with it represents just as much of an oligarchic closed shop as the Athenian aristocracy.
This glamour - the illusory and fleeting appeal of vogueish technologies which makes it impossible to discern real, lasting social movements from tiny whorls of Digital possibility - is dangerous for any sector which embraces it too readily, and particularly so for one as delicately positioned in society as Cultural Heritage.
There is a thrusting, ambitious and enegetic new media movement in museums, and previous suggestions that the place of museums is not at the bleeding edge has been met with a kind of stunned opprobrium - but only ever from a handful of people. For the rest - those who are fighting against constrained circumstances and small politics - there is a real need to translate all of this possibility down to real, achievable outcomes which can be implemented locally and which will deliver local value.
Because we are at risk of the front-runners becoming completely dissociated from the mass of museums, of the realites of practice becoming divorced from the possibilities of the social web. Yes, our users could (perhaps should) become our collaborators. And yes, the process of assigning meaning to collections should become more democratic. And yes, too, technology has the potential to provide channels and platforms through which some of this could be achieved. But these things are luxuries which many museums can ill-afford.
So, yes to prosumers. But yes, too, to my Gran who wants a nice place to go and be told about interesting things.
