Even the Robots Are Bored at the Tech Museum

Related link: http://www.thetech.org

Today’s San Jose Mercury News (“the newspaper of Silicon Valley”) has a front-cover story about one of the deep ironies in this world-famous technopolis: The $113 million Tech Museum of Innovation is tanking. Attendance dropped by half within three years of the museum’s opening in 1999 and has remained flat. Revenue is also down by 50%, causing an operating deficit last year despite 20 layoffs. (Staff size has fallen from 200 to about 120 in the last few years, the paper says.)

There’s some hope that the new CEO, who arrives in April, will be able to turn things around, but based on what I’ve seen, the Tech will need to make some drastic changes. Having lived in Silicon Valley for more than a decade, I’ve made several trips to the Tech, including one with my father—a renowned chemistry educator—and two with my young sons. None of them wants to go back.

How could a science museum in the heart of Silicon Valley fail so badly? Its mission statement sounds ideal:

To engage people of all ages and backgrounds in exploring and experiencing technologies affecting their lives, and to inspire the young to become innovators in the technologies of the future.

But the problem, as I see it, is that the exhibits just aren’t designed for exploring and experiencing. There’s too little hands-on equipment and far too many bland computer simulations. It’s just weird to pay good money for a chance to run some cruddy 8-bit graphic demos on ancient PCs. (Though my recollection is that the admission prices used to be about double what they are now.) Instead of learning by doing, you’re forced to watch science through glass.

Two exhibits in particular highlighted the benefits and challenge of making science interactive. On my last visit, my 2-year-old son and I sat down to watch a robotics demo. The star of the show, a late-generation Sony Aibo, could have been a crowd-pleaser. But the poor robodog actually fell asleep! Prod and cajole as his trainer might, ol’ Aibo refused to participate, just lying on the floor, sulking.

Interestingly, the successful exhibit also showcased robotics. It had an irresistible name like “Meet the Peanut Butter Robot.” When we climbed to the museum’s third floor, we discovered that the PB Robot was actually a high school student in a chef’s hat. He was standing behind a table with a jar of peanut butter, a bag of bread, and a knife. To program him to make a sandwich for you, you had to write instructions on a piece of paper.

The joy of the exhibit was that the Peanut Butter Robot interpreted everything literally, forcing you to develop precise programming code if you wanted to eat. For example, writing, “Put the peanut butter on the bread” might provoke the robot to lift the jar and balance it on the loaf. There’s a more detailed description of the demonstration here (580KB PDF), but perhaps PB Robot was one of the workers who got cut, because I never saw him again.

Every time I visit the NAMM musical instrument show, I see more add-on hardware designed to make music software tactile. Clearly technology is more inspiring when it facilitates interaction. For the sake of future innovators, let’s hope the Tech Museum and other educational institutions start to realize that as well.

What got you turned on to technology?