What did Everyman have that Web 2.0 museum-goers don’t?

Time! Specifically time available vs information available–Everyman and Web 2.0 netizens are in different galaxies.  Everyman had less info to choose from. Today’s time available (limited) vs. information available (unlimited) is going to be the ultimate failure of interactive web-based museum going as envisioned by our authors for today.

Nearly all the authors make great cases for the need to connect to the material and to create their own interpretations of past ideas and events.  I couldn’t agree more, because I’m guilty of the opposite…I’m usually the guy in the baseball hat making a high-speed pass through the museum muttering “huh!” or “hmm?”  Sometimes I even slow down to a slow walk and twist my neck to read the captions.  When I do slow down I make connections that make the museum exhibits more interesting and memorable–Check!

Spending lots of time on the web in a collaborative discussion and interpretation of artifacts, or creating my own “playlist” of museum articles sounds pretty exciting, but who will ever have the time to look at all these posts? With an open and unlimited approach, it’s going to take some kind of Google Juice to get anybody to look at your posts. How meaningful is your post with all the “0 comments”? What’s the value of thousands of trees falling in the forest with nobody listening? Sorry about the pessimism, but I think that the enthusiasm of a new approach will be dimmed by realities of info overload.