Remember when the Tech Museum of Innovation opened in downtown San Jose, and it was SO VERY COOL and a huge destination when you had friends in town? That was a little over ten years ago. Sadly, we all know that ten years might as well be 100 years in software. Sometime in the last ten years The Tech has become crazy dated, and nowhere near as “innovative” as it’s moniker would have you believe.
Some of the exhibits are still pretty cool. The earthquake simulator is a good example of that. The robot deal that spells your name out of wooden blocks…very cool. In fact, many of the more mechanical exhibits are definitely worth seeing and playing with.
But…
What the hell has happened as far as keeping current with the software exhibits? Nevermind the seemingly high percentage of these things that just. don’t. work. (hardware failures, crashes and reboots on WINDOWS 98, I might add) The things that *do* work are often hopelessly out of date. Particularly glaring is one exhibit where visitors can make their own personalized web page, with a few customizations in the colors and backgrounds, sort of like a rudimentary blog. They can even put their photo on it, snapped by an attached webcam. They can use a bar code scanner to load in the exhibits they have already visited, and then give a little summary of their experience about each of them. That sounds pretty good, right?
EXCEPT THE WEB PAGE YOU PRODUCE IS STRAIGHT OUT OF GEOCITIES CIRCA 1998.
It’s bad, friends. Really bad. Is this really representative of innovation? HERE?? We are smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a web developer and *THAT* is the personalized web page we are showing off at the Tech Museum of Innovation? WHAT KIND OF MIXED UP WORLD ARE WE LIVING IN???? I’m sure it was great when they launched it, but come on…there are a bazillion free websites where kids can set up a personalized page about a million times snappier than these with about four mouse clicks…maybe using only their FEET.
How about the spam whack-a-mole machine? Did we pick that one up at a Chuck-E-Cheese that went out of business? Why not an exhibit where kids have to design their own filter and then have hundreds and then thousands of pretend words hammer at it, complete with L33T spelling variations to demonstrate the vigilance required, and how easily a system can be totally swamped with spam? Let kids try to keep up adding new variations to their filter. It would be so much more interactive, so much more realistic, and most importantly, NOT OF THE STONE AGE. Kids are not stupid. Remember that the kids playing with this stuff probably have email addresses of their own. They’ve likely been on computers or online since they were toddlers in one way or another. Give them more value.
Let’s talk about the roller coaster build simulator. It’s pretty simplistic, but the kids dig it because after they build their own roller coaster, they can take their little barcode over and sit down in what is essentially a hard bench in front of a large tv and “ride” their roller coaster. Great! Except for the part where IT DOESN’T WORK. Two of the kids spent fifteen minutes building their coaster, and tweaking their designs only to walk over, stick their barcode in the reader and be told there was no file found. Total. Letdown.
You know what *is* neat though? The big software driven marble labyrinth where you tilt a large flat computer screen from four sides to move the marble through the maze. Oh wait…that didn’t work either. The marble was stuck in one corner.
These place needs a total reboot. Apple? Google? Ebay? Everyone? All you folks here in the valley that pave the way for the rest of the world, how can you guys let this place represent the valley in which we all live and WORK?? This is totally embarrassing. I am calling on you to get your marketing people down to The Tech and see what you can sponsor. If we want to let the museum continue to morph into a glorified lobby for the IMAX theater, great, but it’s ridiculous and sad that with all the real innovation in the valley, THIS is what we are presenting to the rest of the world.
We can do better. To quote @aaronh , “There isn’t a single thing here more impressive than the free apps on my iPhone.” He couldn’t be more right.
I don’t want to abandon this place, but I can’t abide membership renewal if this is the way it stays.
