Rob Stephenson

The winners shown below, chosen by a distinguished panel of judges, are outstanding examples of tools to help people work together better, make better decisions together or solve tougher problems together to create a better world.  The final winner(s) of the Program for the Future Challenge will be chosen in a few weeks by staff from The Tech Museum and other participating museums, after the entrants have time to develop "demos" or museum exhibits for their entries. The project that won the Engelbart Award, HealthMap, is a web platform that combines official and informal (e.g. Google News) sources for an up-to-the-minute global map of human and animal diseases.  The platform has been recognized as a leading indicator of disease outbreaks such as the H1N1 flu. The Engelbart Prize carries an award of $1000 USD.   In addition to the five semi-finalists, other projects deemed worthy of honorable mention by the judges and/or the conference organizers are Charity Connect, The Synergy Engine,  Transit Everywhere, Bloomer--Collective Intelligence,  Intelligent Web,  Fair-Share Spending and Hugging Media.

Dr. Douglas Engelbart (right) congratulates Clark Freifeld, a co- author of the HealthMap project via Skype (photo by Bill Daul).

The Program for the Future Challenge Semi-Finalists

	HealthMap: Global Disease Alert Map	John Brownstein, Harvard Medical School; Clark Freifeld, Mass. General Hospital; et al.
Engelbart Prize Winner		HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.
	Your Health vs. The Crowd	Alex Carmichael, Cure Together
		How does your health compare to thousands of other people? This interactive exhibit will compare visitors' biometrics with all other visitors, and allow people to look up recommendations from the crowd for how to deal with a number of health conditions, drawing on the wealth of data collected at CureTogether.com.
	The Deliberatorium: Towards Large-Scale Structured Deliberation	Mark Klein, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
		Large numbers of people view, comment on, rate, and contribute issues, ideas, pros, and cons for solving a complex multi-disciplinary challenge in a way that enables radically improved signal-to-noise ratios, encourages evidence-based reasoning, and allows effective allocation of community attention.
	Sourcemap	Leonardo Bonanni, MIT Media Lab
		A web tool for understanding where things come from and what they are made of in order to foster an informed discussion around the issues of environmental and social sustainability.
	Dreamfish: a global work cooperative	Tiffany von Emmell, Dreamfish
		A global work cooperative, we are building a work world for all that alleviates poverty and empowers the disadvantaged through microenterprise development networking. Women entrepreneurs moving out of poverty, unemployed professionals, elders starting next career, young independents making a difference - All are welcome to dreamfish.com.

To see the current entries or add a new one, go to
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/program-for-the-future/program-for-the-future-challenge

The judging criteria for the Challenge entries, determined by a distinguished panel of advisors, are in three parts:

Your Method, Tool or Technology

• Can your innovation be a stepping stone towards enabling people to solve an important problem?
• Does your innovation promote communication and collaboration? 
• Will your innovation enable changes in the way people work together that will lead to better decisions or outcomes?
• Does your innovation scale, continuing to support better outcomes even as more people use it? 
• Does your innovation have the potential to change social and cultural practices for the better? 

Your Demo 

• Is your demo hands-on and interactive? Is the museum visitor's experience an improvement over Web access? 
• Does your demo adequately explain how and why your method, tool or technology works? 
• Will your demo inspire others? 

Your Plan for Impact 

• Is your plan likely to lead to successful adoption and widespread dissemination?
• Would winning a prize make a significant difference to your innovation’s potential impact? 
• Does your plan favor community contribution and global connection?

Many really interesting ideas have been submitted, but few have a well-developed idea for a demo (a.k.a. museum exhibit).  Apparently, developing collective intelligence tools and museum exhibits require quite different skill sets.  Who knew?  The advisors have therefore decided to split the judging process in two: deciding first on the merits of only the "method, tool or technology" and the "plan for impact."  Judging the merits of the demo will not occur until about a month later, in coordination with the sponsoring museums (The Tech Museum, the MIT Museum and Science Centre Singapore).

Accordingly, we are giving entrants an **EXTENSION** of about a month (details coming soon) to complete their demos.  This will not; however; change the Feb. 8 deadline to enter; describe your method, tool or technology; and your plan for impact.  The selection of the first stage of judging (but not the final winners) will be announced at CoLABoration 2010, the second Program for the Future Conference, on March 3.  The final winners will be announced a month or two later.

Finally, speaking of the PFTF Conference on March 3, it will be a collaboration mash-up.  At CoLABoration 2010, we are experimenting with Doug Engelbart's idea of "co-evolution" -- by bringing together technology leaders with experts in human facilitation and representatives of many disciplines -- all focused on improving collaborative techniques.  Can you help us fire up the global brain?  Our  goal is to launch a collaborative community that will become an intentional neural network for global problem solving.  Humanity could find innovative ways to handle our world crises (not to mention our day-to-day problems)  if we all could put our heads together and our egos out of the way.

Because it will be focused on doing collaboration not just talking about it, attendance will be limited.  If you would like to attend in person at The Tech Museum in San Jose, please fill out this application and we will contact you.  We will announce plans for virtual participation soon.  For more information, see programforthefuture.org/conference.

Engelbart gave us tools to raise Collective IQ and a stunning example of how it works.  Now it's up to us to take up the challenge.  To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Engelbart's astounding demo, the Program for the Future is bringing together some of the best minds in science, media, business and education -- and we hope you will be among them -- to explore the question: what's next? 

On December 8 and 9 we'll hear from some of today's most provocative speakers, then brainstorm ways to enhance our capability for problem solving, decision making, knowledge organization, and planning in every field of human endeavor.

Featured Speakers

• Professor Thomas Malone, Founding Director, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
  
• Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Associate Director, MIT Media Laboratory
• Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google
• Andries van Dam, Professor, Brown University
• Alan Kay, President, Viewpoints Research Institute
• Steve Wozniak, co-founder, Apple Computer, Inc.
• Dr. Peter Friess, President, the Tech Museum of Innovation
  

December 8
- Speakers and Workshops on collective intelligence at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San José (map). 

In keeping with Engelbart's vision of mass collaboration, this event brings together many communities -- education, business, nonprofit, social, political and technology. The day will end with a special tour led by Peter Friess, The Tech Museum President, through Leonardo: 500 Years into the Future, the largest exhibition of da Vinci's engineering, anatomical studies and art ever to visit the United States.

December 9- The morning program at Stanford University's Wallenberg Hall (map) is a workshop and call to action to organize ourselves to harness the collective intelligence of our community.

In the afternoon, SRI is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Engelbart's legendary "mother of all demos"at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium (map).  We hope you will join us for that event as well.

The Future- The Program for the Future will launch an annual, global design challenge for new tools that improve Collective Intelligence.  This competition will run for 12 months, and winners will be on display at The Tech Museum and the MIT Museum.

To register for this exciting conference (including virtual attendance), go to programforthefuture.org/register.  For more information, see programforthefuture.org/about.

The UcanTu exhibition will highlight a handful of technologies that benefit humanity on a global scale.  The gallery is scheduled to open officially in Feb. 2009, with a "soft opening" this December.  The UcanTu exhibition was launched in Adult Second Life on May 6, and on July 9 in Teen Second Life.  The prize competition was announced on July 9 also, in both the Main and Teen grids.

The judges, all staff or volunteers at the Tech Museum, were:

• Tina Blaine, Curator, UcanTu Exhibition, The Tech Museum
• Matteo Bittanti, Curator, Art Film & Music Exhibition, The Tech Museum
• Bob Ketner, Virtual Community Manager, The Tech Museum
• Rob Stephenson, Curator, The Tech Virtual, The Tech Museum
• Amanda Riley, Manager, Tech Awards Program, The Tech Museum
• Kyle Walker, Intern and Teen Grid Volunteer Coordinator, The Tech Museum
• Amparo Leyman Pino, Education Consultant, Papalote Museo del Niño, México and volunteer, The Tech Museum
  

The challenge for UcanTu competition participants was to showcase one of these technologies in a way that makes it meaningful to museum visitors, and makes them realize that the tools to build a better world are not out of reach, but all around us.  It should make them want to get involved in their own communities and in the world ("You can, too!").  In spite of this difficult challenge and the short timeline (especially for the Teen Grid contestants), 18 exhibit designs were completed by the deadline (nine in the Adult Grid and nine in the Teen Grid).  The quality of the exhibits was outstanding, and the judges had a hard time deciding among them.

And the winners are (opening the envelope):

for Exhibit Concepts incorporated into the real museum exhibition (prize of 250,000 linden per team member)

Terran Solar Boat	An interactive display, based on the Solar Sailor project, showing how Solar Power and Renewable Energy sources can be used.
click for larger view	Tristan Watts-Willis  (avatar: Tdub Dowler) Ben Newton             (avatar: Wally Oyen) Andrew Brown         (avatar: Bubby Boucher) Maxwell Strog          (avatar: Aran Trefoil)
KickStart our Economy	Step into the shoes of a KickStart farmer and see how much 'water' you can pump, enough for one stalk of corn? Enough for a family? Enough to feed the whole village?
click for larger view	Marie Crandell (avatar: Lydia Milner) Stina Cooke     (avatar: Alisa Cleanslate)                         (avatar: Mars Voyager)

Best in Teen Grid (50,000 linden prize)

Take a Bath in the Fog	This exhibit demonstrates the FogQuest fog collection technology and shows how it could be put to sensible use in arid countries.
click for larger view	Isaac Wagner (avatar: Totem Guffler)

Runner Up (5,000 linden prize)

Solar Sailing: the Future of Eco-Green	This project, also based on Solar Sailor, demonstrates the practicality of solar travel and how it can be used to make a better future.
click for larger view	Dan H.              (avatar: Ubuntu Houston) Jeffrey Francus (avatar: Steven Fermi)                          (avatar: Merridew Andel)                          (avatar: Jay Closterman)

Best in Main Grid (50,000 linden prize)

Barefoot Brilliance!	Experience some of the skills and products of Barefoot College graduates and test yourself against their skills.
click for larger view	Marie Crandell (avatar: Lydia Milner)                         (avatar: Mars Voyager)

Runner Up (5,000 linden prize)

Cool Vaccines	Heat-sensitive labels can monitor the viability of life-saving vaccines during a power outage or for vaccination programs in the field
click for larger view	Eileen Moy           (avatar: Chara Clawtooth) Thomas Warsaw (avatar: Jayson Zimermann) Kai Chu               (avatar: Purplewolf Destiny) Jennifer Rand      (avatar: Sarna Sideways) Larry McGrail Victor Wang

Most Inspiring Exhibit (50,000 linden prize)

Create a Universal Language	Cameras, satellites, and the Internet enable people to document and share stories from around the world, bringing attention to ways of respecting or violating human rights
click for larger view	Kara Bennett   (avatar: Dancers Yao) Stina Cooke    (avatar: Alisa Cleanslate) Susan Patrice (avatar: Kasuko Magic)

UcanTu Prize Ceremonies Aug. 8, 2008

Main Grid: onstage are Stephe Roux, Agent Heliosense and Shakini Parnass (all Tech staff), and winners Lydia Milner, Mars Voyager, Chara Clawtooth and Dancers Yao	Teen Grid: onstage are winners Tdub Dowler, Wally Oyen, Bobby Boucher, En Bergbaum (Volunteeer Coordinator), Copernic Heliosense (Tech staff) and winner Ubuntu Houston.

Probably the most popular exhibit in the Virtual Test Zone gallery is called Mashup Masterpiece.

Mashup Masterpiece exhibit and its author, Marie Crandell

The exhibit project now called Mashup Masterpiece  began with the following “big idea” on the project’s Webpage:

To enable the audience to experience the role of the painter - through visual aids, animation and audio stream - to step into the shoes of the painter and 'paint' an existing painting by a real painter.

The idea then went through the following evolution from design sketch (left) to Second Life prototype (center) to finished exhibit (right).

(click on any image for a larger view)

The notion of audio narration was dropped during the SL prototyping stage as the exhibit was quite full already.   In moving from SL to the gallery, the surrounding studio “with a dusty wooden floor with paint splattered over it, …quiet and enclosed, but with a peaceful feeling” was dropped for lack of space.   In SL the finished painting was stripped down through nine color stages and the images loaded in reverse so that the painting 'appeared' before your eyes.The finished exhibit achieved this effect by adding a spin browser to dial through the stages of the painting and a Photoshop-like palette of tools and colors  for visitors to “paint” their own version.

The author of Mashup Masterpiece, Marie Crandell of Plymouth, England is an accountant who has formerly worked as a professional classical dancer and journalist.  She had been in Second Life since December, 2006, and it took her about 100 hours over a four week period to build her prototype.  This profile is quite typical for  our award winners: talented professionals with a year’s  prior SL experience who spent a month building their virtual exhibit.

You Can, Too!
You can create a museum exhibit.  You can inspire others.  You can make a difference.  You can win fame and fortune (well, perhaps a little anyway).

The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA (RL) will award  prizes of up to one million lindens for the best interactive exhibits designed in Second Life for our upcoming exhibition called "UcanTu." 

UcanTu

The UcanTu exhibition showcases 12 award-winning examples of "technology benefiting humanity" (for more details and a complete list of the technologies, see http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu/ ).  Each of these technologies benefits health, education, environment, economic development or equality on a global scale. 

THE CHALLENGE

Your challenge is to develop an interactive exhibit that highlights one or more of these award-winning innovations in a way that explains its importance, makes it relevant to the lives of museum visitors, and makes it understandable how it works.  The purpose of your exhibit is to inspire visitors to realize they can make a difference ("You can, too") in their community and the world, either by supporting these particular innovations or by coming up with ideas of their own.

PRIZES

- For exhibits selected to be part of the RL UcanTu exhibition:
L$250,000 per team member, up to a max of L$1M.

Note: Only exhibits that are truly engaging and novel will be considered for adoption.  Be sure to discuss your concept with Rob or Bean by email, or talk in-world to Stephe, Shakini or Lydia on the Main Grid, or to En or Copernic on the Teen Grid to make sure it is not one we are already considering.

There will be five additional prizes, awarded independently of the prize above:
- Most Inspiring Exhibit: L$50,000 per exhibit

- Best in Show (Adult): L$50,000 per exhibit
- runner up: L$5,000 per exhibit

- Best in Show (Teen): L$50,000 per exhibit
- runner up: L$5,000 per exhibit

For more details, see http://thetechvirtual.org/help/faq/prizes

DEADLINE

Hurry, the judging will take place on August 7.  Winning exhibits will be selected by senior exhibit designers from The Tech Museum. 

HOW TO ENTER

To enter the contest, you must:
- submit your exhibit idea in text as a project at
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu-projects.
- create a virtual prototype here inside an exhibit frame.

Once you have your idea and are ready to build, get a frame for your exhibit.  Create a sign that gives the basic info on your exhibit (title, idea, your name) and any help you are looking for.  If you have not already described your project on
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu-projects, please do so.  This is a collaborative effort and we encourage you to find other partners and build exhibits as teams.  You can join the team for an existing project by going to its Web page and clicking on 'join this project' (just make the exhibit is located on the same grid as you).  Please be respectful of others and their exhibits - if you would like to contribute to someone else's exhibit, contact them and ask to join their team through the Website first.

GUIDELINES

First of all, read the Introduction to the UcanTu exhibition at
http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/ucantu/ucantu 
Then observe the following guidelines:

   1. The exhibit should highlight one or more of the Tech Award-winning technologies listed here, in a way that makes them meaningful and accessible.
   2. The exhibit should be inspiring.  It should make visitors realize that the tools to make a better world are not out of reach, but all around us.  It should make them want to get involved in their own communities and in the world ("You can, too!").
   3. The exhibit must be interactive, and it should not rely on docent explanations or a lot of documentation for visitors to understand it.
   4. It should be educational.  It should convey an understanding of a) how the featured technology actually works, b) what global problem it addresses, and c) how it provides a solution.
   5. If there is a connection that can be made with Silicon Valley (companies, local uses for the technology, individuals involved, etc.), that is a plus.
   6. It must be feasible to build the exhibit in real life.
   7. The exhibit concept must be licensed under Creative Commons (you agreed to this when you joined the Website) and the virtual exhibit should be full-perm.
   8. If you need to contact one of the Tech Award laureates, talk to Rob or Bean first.  We may already have what you need.

MORE INFO

For more information,
consult http://thetechvirtual.org/help/faq/ucantu-faq or
email rstephenson@thetech.org, or tblaine@thetech.org.

That is to say, it opened the Virtual Test Zone gallery with the world's first exhibits that were developed through an open source process, under a Creative Commons license, and prototyped in Second Life. Although other museums have experimented with letting visitors modify, evaluate or contribute content to their exhibits, the Tech is the first to throw the doors of its content creation process completely open to the public.

And what, you ask, of quality? Well, the exhibits in the Tech Virtual Test Zone answer that decisively. These seven exhibits are innovative, engaging and first-rate. To sense this for yourself, take this video tour. Credit for this goes first of all to their authors, whose exhibits were selected from a large field of contenders. Credit also goes to the acumen of Nina Simon, the Curator-pro-tem of the exhibition, and to the skill of The Tech's remarkable engineers, for turning bits to atoms. Simon and the engineering staff reinterpreted the virtual exhibits into steel, wood and plastic, transforming some of them almost beyond recognition. For a side-by-side comparison of virtual and real exhibits, see this page.

To celebrate this milestone, The Tech organized a Summit on Digital Democracy in Exhibit Design on the same day. The program had two keynote speakers. First Peter Friess explained how, when hired as the Tech Musuem's President, he was charged with renewing its galleries on a regular basis because, in Silicon Valley, visitors expect to see the "latest and greatest" innovations. He explained how he came up with the idea of "open sourcing" the curation process to meet this business need.

Opening of the Virtual Test Zone gallery	Summit attendees in SL watch Philip Rosedale watching them

Then Philip Rosedale, Chairman of Linden Labs, spoke. He described how building a Star Trek-style door for his childhood bedroom provided the inspiration to create the Second Life virtual world. In Second Life, the residents or "avatars" are encouraged to build whatever they like and provided free tools to do so. Every object they create can be scripted, to make the world dynamic and interactive. These are the very qualities that make Second Life ideal for rapidly prototyping museum exhibits. The keynotes were being streamed into the virtual Tech Museum in Second Life. There was standing room only in both real life and Second Life, and between the two about 130 people attended the Summit. As Rosedale spoke, he referred frequently to this virtual part of his audience. Occasionally he read aloud the chat comments coming from Second Life, displayed on a flat panel monitor at the front of the auditorium: "You tell 'em, Philip, I'm in-world 18 hours a day and it's my regular job."

 

Rosedale had strong praise for The Tech Virtual:

What's happening here at The Tech is just incredible ... in terms of the evolution of virtual world technology.
All intellectual production will soon move into cyberspace... I can't thank you guys enough because you're doing it. You're proving it. You're making the point, this is exactly the proof point that you look for.
I can't tell you how excited I am to be here and see what's been built at The Tech.

 

After the keynotes, one of the exhibit designers, Marie Crandell, recorded a video tour of the Test Zone gallery, demonstrating the exhibits and interviewing several of the other designers. At the end of her tour she was joined by Philip Rosedale and Nina Simon, who provided more details about some of the exhibits. Commented Rosedale: "It is so amazing that this happened so fast - I just can't believe it. I thought it was going to be, like, two to three years."

 

 

 

 

The novel strategy of open source museum development has borne its first fruit, the Art, Film & Music exhibition which is opening next month.  All six winners from the recent SL to RL competition will be included.  To celebrate, the Tech will host a Summit on Digital Democracy in Exhibit Design on June 4, 2008, the day of the opening.  The event will take place at The Tech in San Jose, and will also be streamed live to The Tech Virtual Museum in Second Life.  Keynote speakers will be Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab founder and Chairman, and Peter Friess, Ph.D., President of The Tech. A panel of leaders from the museum and technology worlds will consider the following questions:

• How can external experts and amateurs play a role in exhibit design?
• How useful are virtual worlds for museums?
• How to build and manage an online community.
• How to foster inter-museum collaboration.

And You, as a member of the Tech Virtual community, are invited!  Remember the date:

The two latest winners are Richard Milewski's Reprojecting San Jose and Nick Chen's MIDI -- the Golden Age.

Reprojecting San Jose explores the transformations involved in transforming flat photos into a 360 degree panorama. The Second Life prototype allows the viewer's avatar to climb up into a circular display to experience the panorama from the correct point of view. The exhibit also provides the visitor with a kit that includes instructions and a cool panoramic HUD (heads-up display) that makes it possible to take one's own panoramic photos.

Reprojecting San Jose
(click for larger view)

MIDI -- the Golden Age is an exploration of the Music Instrument Digital Interface, a standard that has lasted 25 years and is still going strong. The Second Life prototype consists of five different shapes that represent different instruments and, when touched, change color and play a short sequence of notes. There are also spots that activate several of the instruments at once when touched. In the accompanying text, Nick explains that as a digital interface MIDI can be controlled by many interfaces (including the Wii) besides a keyboard, and can control things besides musical instruments. On the project's Website, Nick includes a video showing how MIDI can sequence and manipulate video clips as well as musical notes.

MIDI -- The Golden Age
(click for larger view)

Both projects are individual efforts by creators who have built their careers at the intersection of the arts, technology and education. This was the first experience of building and scripting in Second Life for both winners, and interestingly both winning exhibits are reworkings of their authors' earlier attempts.

Richard Milewski (Richard Blackhawk in Second Life) is a San Jose-based photographer and technologist. Richard's photography Website is Studio San Jose, where he specializes in panoramic photographs of urban scenes. The former InfoWorld Editor-in-Chief wears many other technology hats as well. He serves as Chief Technology Officer for the Greaves Group, a K-12 educational consultancy, and is principal of RamPage Publishing and AVWX.net, which provide cellphone access to weather maps and data for civilian aviators.

Nick Chen (Nixian Denja in Second Life) is a digital musician who lives in San Francisco. He works at at the Blue Bear School of Music, where he is director of the Studio 101 program, a traveling music outreach program for schools. He also plays with two groups- Not Your Average Superheroes, a live hip hip act and Cloud City Rejects, an electronic rock/house band.

More Judging

There will be another round of judging on Monday, March 31. Actually two rounds, by two different processes. There will be a third round to select exhibits for the Art, Film & Music exhibit opening at The Tech in real life, similar to the previous rounds on March 1 and March 15. Probably only one or two more exhibits will be selected, because our engineers will be hard-pressed to complete even that many exhibits in time for the June 4 opening. The second round of judging on March 31 will be entirely different, determined by jury of a dozen distinguished experts from the worlds of museums, art and technology. The jury will choose exhibits to become part of the permanent collection of the virtual Tech Museum, and will in addition award six special, $1000 prizes. The jury will have a week to deliberate, so these awards will not be announced until the second week of April.

The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop, launched in December, is Museum Director Peter Friess's grand experiment in open sourcing the museum's content development process. His idea, that is, is to fill the halls of a major museum with exhibits conceived entirely by outsiders, prototyped in Second Life, and licensed under Creative Commons for all to use. Although other museums have tinkered with having visitors participate in the process of developing exhibits, or used Second Life as an alternative presentation medium, none has dared this radical step before.

So far, about three dozen projects have been set up in Second Life (out of 65 on the Website). On Friday, Feb.29, the first four of these were chosen for incorporation into the real museum. They were: Artist-in-Residence: The Painter, Musical Chairs, Wikisonic and Connecting Point: Hole in (Virtual) Space. They represent, respectively, an interactive view of the evolution of a painting over time, a musical carousel where each seat represents different instruments in an orchestra, a 3-D music box where viewers set the "pins" corresponding to the placement of notes on a staff, and a RL-SL portal through which visitors on both sides can collaborate in a variety of games. Images of these exhibits in the Second Life workshop are shown below. Click on an image for a larger view.


Artist-in-Residence was created by Marie Crandell, in real life a systems accountant from Plymouth, England. Musical Chairs was created by Leanne Garvie, a philosophy graduate student and artist from Toronto, Canada. Wikisonic is the brainchild of Jon Brouchoud, an architect and designer from Madison, WI, USA. Connecting Point is the product of a team from the Salford University, in Manchester, U.K. Alan Hook is an artist, inventor and graduate student, and Pete Wardle is a lecturer.

These four projects are every bit as varied as are their authors, but they have certain things in common. Besides scoring well on all the criteria for the exhibit competition, they share the following additional characteristics:
▪ they emphasize interaction with and participation by the viewer,
▪ their exhibit concept was developed first on the Website, and then prototyped in Second Life, and
▪ interestingly enough, their final form in real life will probably be quite different from their present appearance. Their real world instantiation will be a poetic, not a literal, interpretation of their Second Life form. This reflects the fact that real life and Second Life are quite different, particularly with regard to the way visitors can interact with an exhibit (for example, there's not much that avatars can do with their hands in Second Life).

As our Engineering Shop begins the job of interpreting and building these exhibits for our upcoming Art, Film & Music exhibition opening in June, many other promising exhibits are moving forward in Second Life. There will be two more rounds of judging, on March 15 and March 31, for Art, Film and Music, and soon selections for other exhibitions at The Tech and even for other museums.

History will tell whether this open source experiment in museum exhibit development will become commonplace, or even worth repeating. But it is here now, and these exciting exhibits are proof that it works.

The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop is an experiment in adaptation.  Institutions need to adapt in response to changes in taste, technology and the zeitgeist, and museums are no exceptions.

The technology of the information age is changing us from a society of mass consumption into one of collective participation.  Flickr, YouTube, blogs, Wikipedia, del.icio.us and other Web 2.0 tools are creating a many-to-many culture of production and sharing.  As Daniel Pink

put it, we have achieved "digital marxism" where technology has put the machinery of information-age production into the hands of the people.  How will this change museums?

 

This experiment in museum evolution introduces two innovations:

1. It separates exhibit design from exhibit construction.  By introducing Second Life as a rapid prototyping tool for exhibit design, this experiment makes it possible for individuals from around the world to collaborate on the same exhibit project.  Using The Tech Museum in Second Life to showcase these exhibits designs makes it easy for museums to pick and choose what they will build in real life for their visitors. 
   
2. It opens the exhibit creation process up to the world at large.  If you think you have the chops to design a first-class museum exhibit, you have a chance to create one for The Tech Museum (and win a $5,000 prize in the process).

Good museums have always copied exhibits from one another.  Together with the Creative Commons license, the first innovation has the potential to create an open source market for museum exhibits, similar to the successful gift economies for open source software, scientific advances and educational courseware.  It liberates the content from the container.

The second innovation has the potential to improve the quality of museums by bringing in new talent, new ideas and new points of view.  As leading computer scientist and Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy recognized: "the smartest people in this business don't work for my company."  By opening up the design process, it breaks down the visitor-curator dichotomy, replacing it with a continuous spectrum of participation:

VISITOR  <->  VOLUNTEER  <->  EXHIBIT DESIGNER  <->  CURATOR

This experiment proposes one answer to the question posed above: "How will museums enter the Age of Participation?"  Do you think it will succeed?  Is this the future of the museum?