Accidental Blogger

About a week ago, I read a blogblurb raving about some new phone app, which would use the power of GPS to tell you where you were and highlight the most interesting thing in the vicinity.For instance, if you were in France, walking near the Eiffel tower, your phone could superimpose cool factoids and trivia about the Eiffel tower on the screen, allowing you to become a walking encyclopedia, in more ways than one.

Heaven forbid that you should just put your phone away and just look up at the Huge Tower. There, just in front of you.

Today's review of museum apps (from the NY Times) suggests that  we have indeed reached the era of phone-toting zombies wandering around the halls of sarcophagi and Picass(i?), colliding as they swipe, swirl and shove their way across their touch screens. The guard rails around the exhibits had better be strengthened to prevent untoward accidents as the wired museum goer pays more attention to the screen than the exhibit.

From the article:

"You have to type in strings of as many as eight or nine digits to get information about an object, though many cannot be found in the system; some offer less information than the museum’s label. The app’s real point, though, is its embrace of populist Web culture,  in which votes and tags are supposed to yield a kind of collective wisdom. If you are looking at an object in the program, you can “vote” for it by clicking on a button with a heart, declaring your taste: “Like this.” You are then directed to other objects people have “liked” in the same gallery and can see how many votes they get. (Few people seem to use this system: the number of “likes” rarely seems to rise above five.)"

Talk about walking hazards, as you attempt to key in all of the above and 'Like' a particular exhibit, and follow the map presented to you to the next object you might 'Like'.

In fairness, though, the author of the article, after weary recaps of every museum app he tried, concludes:

"It is best to consider all these apps flawed works in progress. So much more should be possible. Imagine standing in front of an object with an app that, sensing your location, is already displaying precisely the right information. It might offer historical background or direct you through links to other works that have some connection to the object. It might provide links to critical commentary. It might become, for each object, an exhibition in itself, ripe with alternate narratives and elaborate associations.

And, best of all, you could save it for later, glance up from the screen and look carefully at what faces you, all scrims removed, all distractions discarded. Like this! There must be an app for that!"

Try looking at the objects in the museum, instead of the phone screen. What a revolutionary concept!