BBW22 - Day 2 - What role for Boston's cultural institutions in blockchain and Web3?

[Music] okay everyone thanks for having us I'm Cava mosh Devi publisher and founder of art Scope magazine and here we we have with us David sittenfeld director of current science Communications Museum of Science Neil Timber car who's the director of strategic initiatives at the Boston Children's Museum today we're going to uh as Ian mentioned take a bit of a different angle to technology and finance and we're going to talk about technology with uh respect to some social impacts and the cultural approach um and learning as well with education uh and how that might uh you know drive and inform us as we as we proceed in the future um so we're looking to introduce technology to the public to families to leaders to both the developers and users of the technology and the community at Large and then following initial introductions and discussion the topics I hope to have an active dialogue with you know the audience and members and even a q a so in the museum field in approaching technology program education we find several main constructs one is the parameters and values of introducing and presenting new technology along with incorporating its programming to museum offerings as well as the public a second affecting children development learning and exploration as well as the impact of technology and learning and its applications for future Generations short and long-term programming the introduction of techno introduction of technology in its place in five to forty years for example adaptation measures and virtual experiences we're looking at accessibility and responsibility and inclusion of introducing technology and its applications as well as the political and social impacts we're looking at the prototypes of learning and how we incorporate the technology into learning and education and the visitor experience to the museums and the public so I'm going to start with the discussions and and learn more about our panelists here so if you could each one of you as we go along uh describe your organization your position and what your organization does and what you do in your work sure thanks for that question and thanks for everyone for braving the rain and coming out today um I'm David and and I have a position called director of current science communication at the Museum of Science in Boston and basically uh that encapsulates the idea of trying to give people an opportunity to connect with science and technology as it happens in real time and so this topic uh um and all the speakers that we've heard previously you know are a good example of where we try to give people touch points to connect with science and Technologies that's happening to have them understand what the applications of the technology are going to be how it works why it matters and to give them a sense of having a voice um as the world unfolds we know science and technology is happening faster now than it ever hap uh sort of has before and people can feel lost they can feel disconnected from the world of science and technology they can feel like if they're not an innovator or somebody that's in a room like this they just don't feel like they have a voice or a connection and that has all sorts of implications for um you know the sort of connection between people and the way that they interact with an increasingly uh sort of dominated world when it comes to science and technology so we try to spend time on creating and implementing products that give people a sense to learn how the technology works why they should care about it um how they can communicate with others about it and how they feel like they have a voice thanks David uh my name is Neil um can you hear me okay in the back or maybe all right great um so I'm the director of strategic initiatives at Boston Children's Museum uh some of you might like me wondering what a children's museum is and that's a fair question to ask uh we are a Hands-On play and exploration center the goal of a children's museum is to create experiences uh of joy of learning of exploration uh and of course science technology uh building a good base of curiosity and creativity is all kind of a foundational part of then what becomes a technological Endeavor and for us uh it is a it is a journey of trying to do our best to be stewards for children and families and provide resources for them so for us the roots aren't technology as much as the roots are the families and as we try to grow out from those roots we try to find ways where technology can be integrated into those experiences in as meaningful a way as possible maybe not for the sake of Technology itself off but more to see how technology can be woven into the fabric of what we consider to be those important foundational experiences because most of our audience ends up being children ages 0 to 10 and so you know age zero you might not even consider that an age but that's an age where we do start them off with steam and I'm sure that's going to come up a bit later in our discussion but uh I'm excited to be here and kind of provide a different perhaps less technical jargony discussion and more just a holistic look at kind of what children are facing when they're entering the uh kind of modern technological sphere so happy to be here thanks Neil thanks David uh Neil you mentioned uh the steam stammer and steam which is the science technology engineering math right and steam with the A's the Arts you know in there with the creativity um so I want to ask what does stem and steam mean to museums and and what do you do in your programming to incorporate so for the museum of science uh there's a couple of ways that we try to engage people around an emerging technology like blockchain um there's both the how it works right getting people to understand um the basics of uh how a technology works and why it matters because we need scientists and Engineers to sort of take the Baton and build on what exam uh you know exists already so when you think of a science museum you might think of a place to have an experience where you know you learn Newton's third law or you learn how combustion works and we absolutely do that to inspire uh people around science and technology in the exciting and wonderful role that it can have in making us uh sort of you know understand the world around us but increasingly this is also about understanding how the world works and and how our technological World works and giving people an opportunity to connect with that at a point where they can become an innovator and use the products of science and technology for the things they think are in important and the values that they bring towards what the world should be like sure we'll talk more about some applications and examples of emerging Technologies so the way the museum of science is embracing this is with a strategic initiative called the Boston Science common and it's a pretty uh lofty and ambitious goal there's so much Innovation happening in and around Boston with the universities and the private sector um and there's a lot of people that are deeply connected to that but a lot of people that sort of are being left out and so the Boston Science Commons idea is to look through the lens of a number of emerging technological and scientific spaces and try to feel how can we keep up with the pace of change so that people can both sort of learn how things work but also understand the connection and value that emerging scientific and technological issues have to their lives not only as future scientists and Engineers which we need but also as future voters and parents and artists who can help create a connection between what they see happening in the world and what they they want to see and their dreams and Visions for an emerging technology yeah and um to me steam is um you know we just went through what stem is and we added the AFR and as almost like a more recent afterthought but you know at the Children's Museum the steam education Endeavor started pretty recently in about 2016 but the work we've been doing within Steam that wasn't branded as Steam education started when the museum started in 1913 by a group of science teachers who decided to make it all about how science can help children Express themselves in a way where it made science became a club and a social experience more than it was something that you might get evaluated on and stress about the grades so a lot of the answers and a lot of the conversation contributions I'm going to be giving will have to do with the younger age group that I deal with at Children's Museum where uh Art and Science and Technology uh we all of our experiences recently have been to integrate those as much as possible as opposed to treat them as their own entity and I will say that for us we need to pay attention to what the definition of Technology actually is and when I say for us I mean at the Children's Museum uh internally we use these terms like little T technology and Big T technology right so anything Little T technology we're talking about something like a hammer or a sewing machine we're talking about Big T technology we're talking about blockchain VR some of the stuff that's happening now and happening tomorrow and it's not that there's this distinction and we only do one on the other it's that we have to think very carefully about what we know and don't know about whether a four-year-old can jump onto a VR set and use it immediately and that's something which there's existing research happening now there's some research that's happened and 99 of the research will happen in the next 30 Years so as stewards of families and children for us it's about the the introduction of certain tools and Technologies in a way which is rather than for the sake of that technology itself it lends to a greater understanding or it lends to some building of curiosity it builds a foundation for future learning or builds some sort of a confidence and so for us we treat Steam and Technology within Steam as an Avenue to accomplish those goals rather than perhaps think of it as a more career-oriented way which of course I can't ignore that aspect because that's an important part of where the children are headed and that's why we're building this sense of curiosity and confidence and foundation for future learning um we do want to make sure that we are contributing to what these children are going to be like 20 years from now in the workforce and it's possible that some of you were in a children's museum type setting and it's possible that some of you may not be sitting here today without a certain experience you may have had in that setting it's just very difficult to connect those dots right now when you're 30 years removed from a certain experience but that's where we are trying to kind of plan our flags so um you know steam education is is sort of uh a small part of what we do but it's also kind of everything at the same time if even though that sounds kind of cheesy but yeah excellent so now I'm going to get into the heavier topics um we're going to talk about uh you know technological social and cultural accountability uh and I see the you know museums are a cultural Steward to the public you know as with uh emerging you know Technologies and arts and um and you know and community community and uh public you know dialogue and discussion so uh you museums also have research as well of of uh you know how technology has been with new technologies applied towards family you know so it's children's development towards social impact and uh so uh to see where we're going we can look at where we've been and I like to look at the you know or ask about the museum research and to past new technologies as they've you know come forth um for example you know there's Web 2.0 the web we know now uh most commonly social media which has had a huge you know influence on uh you know education and the public uh and immediate as well as the you know for example Robotics and AI as we get into it so uh I'd like to see what every brain approaches what have what have your approaches been to incorporating these into your programs these you know social media web so forth as well as what has worked and what didn't work and and what lessons can we learn you know implementing blockchain and new technology I I guess I can start um there there's a bunch of interesting Dimensions to your question uh and and it starts with applications right for us a lot of people are looking for what the products of Science and Technology are going to mean for them when they hit the market and also whether it can create a job for somebody who's going there um these are two questions that we often hear from people and one thing that they want to know is what do I need to learn about to contribute to this emerging technological field so an example of that is synthetic biology um the Museum of Science has done a lot on synthetic biology you're part of we've kind of led a network that got people thinking about not only what it is and how it should you know how it's going to play out in terms of different applications for agriculture or you know medicine but also what it means from a perspective of somebody who's going to contribute to that Workforce and that's an interesting example in an analog to this one because you don't have to be a biologist to contribute to that field there's lots of people who never picked up a pipette or sat at a bench they're computer modelers or mathematical modelers or people who uh you know contribute from the perspective of Finance to make this technology happen and each of those people has to work together sometimes across hundreds or thousands of miles to try to figure out how to solve their problem and make it Equitable uh and so there's this applications piece of how can this solve a problem and also the question of who is it serving who's being left out of the discussion and how not you know you hear a lot about the should we or shouldn't we should we do this technology should we implement it or should we not and we certainly touch on that in science museums but I think there's also that how should we how do we Implement a technology in a way that meets and sort of Embraces the hopes dreams fears and joy that people have when they think about something that could be applied so it's easy to do that with something like deep space exploration right people have an open frame for what we might do when we go so somewhere and terraform a new planet it's a little different when there's things that are kind of happening in the background of a technological space that they may or may not use and in the case of you know certain Generations may or may not even have heard from uh and think about and so one thing that we often think a little bit about is you know what are the touch points and analogous situations where we can get people thinking about where they've encountered a new technology and whether or not they had a voice in it and I'll give two examples of this and and then turn it over to hear how Neil uh and his institution might address a slightly different audience base um there's a really interesting uh sort of multi-site program that happened in Europe and that municipal waste um which is always a problem right and it was funded by the European commission and they were thinking about What new technologies could be put into place with uh you know their version of federal funding the European commission Horizon 2020 funding um to try to sort of reach the ideas and goals and so they hosted 99 design focus groups at science museums in rooms kind of like this one you know this got a bunch of people together who never met each other they paid them for the day they gave them breakfast for lunch and they started by saying what do you think happens to your trash when you put it out on the on the curb what do you think happens to it and they had people talk about it and uh you know they learned well actually that's not happens to your trash that what happens next door and you know Belgium or whatever we're getting there or what have you and and they learned about what happened to their trash and then they said well what would you like to see happen to your trash knowing what happens here in another country since people draw they wrote poems they they thought about you know stories that they would like to see happen to their trash and some of the ideas were fanciful and some of them were really quite grounded but what ended up happening with these outputs of these focus groups were 10 ideas were selected as targets for engineers to meet for the Horizon 2020 funding around municipal waste in other words people in the engineering space had to try to figure out how to compete for government funding to make these people's ideas a reality their visions of the future and whether or not they understood the technological sort of realities they had some background on that um they had ideas priorities values about how to include people's uh dreams fears and and hopes for an emerging technology and a problem that we all face and I think this is an example too where people can realize some of the applications that are there and then think a little bit about the world that they'd like to see enabled and guided by their values um with this and the other example I'll give um is the National Science Foundation has a new directorate called Technology Innovation and Partnerships and it's specifically focused on connecting academic research with private sector work and NSF has done a little bit of this before but not even close to the uh scale that's going to be done through this new directorate they have a new program called the regional Innovation engines and what it's supposed to do is connect these sort of private sector startups like we we have a lot of here with University researchers to have mutual learning between them and something that never had happened to do before in this space is you have to engage the public about your work and that means you have to think a little bit about who's being left out of the workforce and hear and shape the trajectory of an emerging technology with the values and perspectives of an Engaged public and so the Museum of Science tries to do this through a number of networks where we get people's upfront sort of anticipatory ideas sort of through open Fame focus groups um and then hopefully can communicate to that to people working in the private sector and in the University space to help them share uh shape the their Vision so that maybe somebody comes to an event like this and then 10 years later when they're founding their own startup or they're a pi of a lab they think back to that interaction they had at the Museum where they talked with a 10 year old visitor and heard an idea that might have seemed out of there but now this person has the pr the power to make their uh Vision happen and they think boy that was a really good idea heard from that young person and I'm going to try to make that happen in the real world uh so I'm a bit concerned that I'm going to be a little less compelling with some of the technology integration I'm going to talk about um but there's a um something I want to mention first which is prior to the museum I worked at a startup company where we were teaching uh Lego robotics classes with Minecraft CAD modeling 3D printing things like that and we applied for a DARPA Grant to create our own blockly based CAD modeling software so blockly most you probably know more than about it than I do it's become a popular kind of interface to teach children about coding about logic and about how to give commands and um you've seen like scratch coding like a robotic cell use a similar drag and drop interface so uh we got this DARPA Grant to create that uh for a cad modeling approach the reason I mentioned this is because for us you were able to sort of feed two birds with one scone we were able to not only create this CAD modeling software which he found to be a pretty robust learning tool both for geometry uh and Mathematics but then also for coding logic but DARPA gained by having a blockly based tool that they could use to deploy in the field so that they could quickly 3D model and print parts for equipment when otherwise they wouldn't have the ability to go to their usual setup and use their usual CAD modeling setup date this is was an alternative for them so this kind of got me thinking about actually some of the ways in which we leverage uh some of the work happening with Children and Families in a way which extends beyond that um fast forward to now we at the Museum a core part of our approach and our pedagogy and our learning framework is that we have a lot of intentionality around how we Implement technology is actually even more intentionality around how we avoid implementing technology and that's sort of like a running inside joke within our Museum and with other Children's Museums is that it's not just Boston Children's Museum there's an overall reluctance to implement a lot of these like I referred to earlier Big T technology approaches in Children's Museums because of their age and because typically a children's museum is so much of these self-guided approaches where we're it's very unlikely we're going to put an AR or VR experience that's not also accompanied by some sort of a program or an educator or some sort of facilitator or some sort of a programmatic or Workshop experience one example of what we have tried to do is offer these sort of taste tests for a certain technology experiences that we know will lead to those kind of three pillars that I keep mentioning which is building a curiosity building some confidence and building a framework for future learning and I come back to this blockly based coating where seeing how prevalent it is as a learning tool and seeing how little access so much of the community still has this is talking a bit about what David was talking about too that living in Boston some of us will be in so many bubbles that we don't realize how many people are outside that bubble right and it's the people outside the bubble that we are actually targeting people within that bubble have other avenues besides the museum like the previous company I was working at these kind of more private companies or ways in which they could do stuff at home so for us we are looking more at the the common denominator of okay children are learning coding logic mathematics animation at starting in second grade first grade kindergarten and this should not be just for those who have access through their school or have access through some Neighborhood Network or through some parents that have gotten together to teach a group of children it should be available to a larger community so for that reason we have started to implement things like Lego robotics scratch coding and other blockly based coding into more of these like taste test formats but we want to make sure that we offer it virtually for those who can't afford to come to the museum want to make sure we're offering it as sort of like a quick 10-15 minute drop-in experience for those who don't have a lot of time just want to dabble and kind of get like I mentioned a taste test and then we also have these one hour long workshops for those who want to actually like sink their teeth and and kind of dive more into it so for us implementing these Technologies is a lot about starting from what the family needs are and meeting them where they are um and one thing I'll mention here too is just as important in building confidence in children is building confidence in their caregivers parents and Guardians especially at an early age where we are interacting with families I can't tell you how many uh grown-ups we deal with who don't have confidence in their own say knowledge of science so they don't do what they can do in order to Foster their own child's exploration of science they don't need to understand what photosynthesis is to still have a meaningful experience learning science in nature with their four-year-old and so for us our programs are designed to not only make sure that we are helping build a child's Foundation of learning but we're also encouraging parents and and caregivers in a way where they can foster and they can continue the experience outside the museum and that carries over from science to now technology for us we want to make sure we're using as much free and open source tools as possible which every day there's another hundred of them appearing thanks to you know the next uh grad student who can do it on their own and create this entire tool and share it with a thousand students within a month uh that's something you're trying to tap into as many of those tools as possible and make it as available as possible to as young an age as possible but not in a way where we're trying to evangelize that technology apology as much as we are trying to make it accessible for those who have already expressed to us through surveys through lots of different interactions that this is something they want this is something they need or this is something they don't know that they need or something they don't even know that they could have access to and we're trying to bridge that Gap open source is effectively a fundamental tenet towards web 3 as well and so uh you know there's an alignment with the teaching and the human you know humanitarian characteristics and there's a funding element to museums as well where we're always going to use as much open source you know non-fee structured stuff as possible especially for Children's Museums where it's a little bit tougher to gain certain funding but yeah it's um yeah you're right it's really key part of web 3 really key part of cultural institutions as well oh yeah like we're gonna have to you know kind of questions on funding as well and into the future and then we want to see like what kind of tools do you have as cultural organizations you know to impact educational social you know and political policy that can lead towards regulation and funding and guidelines yeah I can highlight a few of them some of them will overlap with what the Children's Museum does and what happens with Young Learners and I think some of them will be different uh and they'll have other tools too that I'm interested in hearing about so one of them are exhibits right and that's where we can showcase both the kinds of applications that something like blockchain and web3 is enabling so that people have an uh understanding of when they read about something in the New York Times or they experience it in the marketplace um they they've sort of gotten a hint as to where that's happening an analog to that this Tuesday um we're opening a huge exhibit called exploring AI that looks um all about uh different applications of artificial intelligence um the motivations behind using it and some of the sort of pitfalls that we uh you know will encounter if we don't responsibly think about uh how to implement this technology for everyone and with input from everyone um because of the impacts of sort of existing and and exacerbating societal inequities and disparities um exhibits are one example of doing that and sort of there's great examples of other emerging Technologies where people miss the boat they didn't get a voice um and so it seemed other in the way that Neil was talking about and and I think you know one way to deal with that is in addition to exhibits there's programs um Neil talked about facilitated programs um and there's also examples for people just to meet innovators so that last panel was really interesting because um the four folks on the panel not only talked about why they did uh what they did in terms of potential output in the marketplace but what got them into the space and and this is important because there's a great a deal of social uh science research on the science of science communication the national academies of science has looked a lot about what people perceive from different careers and how much they trust those people and I think we all know that there's a problem with trust and scientific institutions right now so there's a researcher named Susan Fiske at Princeton I think and she looked at how people perceive different career careers and and it was sort of depressing um to hear that she ranked researchers um and and other uh career people along two Dimensions one was how competent they thought that people were how good um and sort of knowledgeable people thought they were by based on what job they had and the second was how warm did they think they were and so you know you can imagine the the gamut between um various people who do lots of jobs whether it's somebody who works in law enforcement to somebody who uh you know Works in healthcare to somebody who works in Emergency Management to somebody who works in education and there were certain career uh trajectories that came out as competent and warm so a nurse came out as competent warm while doctors came out as competent and cold and this actually was correlated with how much we trust the institutions so where did scientists come out it's funny if a scientist described themselves as a teacher then uh because they may you know teach Professor classes at the University in addition to the research they're doing they were perceived as competent and warm whereas scientists were often perceived as competent and cold along with lawyers and bankers and one way that this researcher recommended that you deal with this by having researchers and scientists start with the story how did you get into this so if you're a financial researcher or an economist why did you do that what was it about your upbringing and what problem did you want to solve this is something that I think science museums and Children's Museums can do with put a narrative on why people work in a emerging space like blockchain and why they work with money because there's research that if they don't do that people are going to put their own narratives on whether they're right or not and people are less likely to trust an emerging technology and reject it um so this is an opportunity I think for us to get face to face and also have people understand that scientists researchers and Engineers they look like everyone um and that put a face on things rather than kind of what people assume um Innovation looks like and then the final uh piece I think in addition to programming and Exhibits is deliberation and actually giving people a chance to have an upfront facilitated and deep experience to tell the Next Generation and the current generation of innovators what they want to see for an emerging technology what are the applications that excite you the most where do you not want to see technology implement the way they have already and how does this connect to ways that we've implemented previous technological systems like our highway system our health care System how can we avoid exacerbating those inequities leaving people out and uh you know making things worse rather than better through technological divides uh David's right there's gonna be a lot of overlap I think between kind of his answer in mind main difference though being is that our our audience are at a younger age where they're a little bit further away from that career perspective and you know really when we are talking at Children's Museum about uh what sort of systems or way we can have influence on say a political conversation that manifests uh from a broader question of of right now there it might be a certain political climate where person a is finding it more difficult to relate to person B and that manifests in ways in which David talked about um you know and which is difficult to see person a in uh job X and vice versa and how do we reconcile that um social emotional learning which is more of like a educational curriculum approach and it is a technology but I I like to sort of spin the semantics of that and and kind of view educational approaches as a form of Technology because really what you're doing is you're crafting an approach towards teaching and learning that is then going to a lead to some technological innovation but then also it's going to shape the way that learning manifests into some sort of a product now that can happen through many different ways in the curriculum format engineering and empathy is something that is is connected now more than ever in the career space But at the Children's Museum we're creating a curriculum along with NSF to actually make that happen as early as second grade where it's not just about building a bridge across the river it's about understanding who's going to be Crossing that bridge is it an animal getting to a new habitat is it an animal who used to get to drinking water is it someone who's looking for their family is getting second graders to actually use that narrative-based learning to put themselves in the shoes of someone and then complete the task more meaningfully knowing the the context using the context and the empathy and not just using their quote-unquote just pure stem tools to solve that problem that is one example of kind of Bridging the Gap to put yourself in someone else's shoes sure but then there's also the exhibit approach we have a new exhibit opening in October called you me we and that exhibit is meant to allow the visitor to put their own narrative into the museum world so every visitor can leave their footprint and leave their narrative can write something can share a song they can draw something and this exhibit it's meant to share what someone's personal story is and what their experiences from so many different dimensions from a cultural language race food music dance uh all these are dimensions in which people Define themselves and politically there are so many hot button topics that we latch on to but when you actually bring it back to a child who's four years old what they're focusing on is what they what their senses are sensing what are they seeing what are they hearing what are they smelling and to them it's not about the logical larger political conversation it's about trying to make friends it's about they're more likely to find commonalities and differences in another human and so for us that exhibit is meant to initiate these conversations learning how to talk to your siblings to your family to other people you meet in the museum if a four-year-old can have that meaningful conversation and they keep up that practice as they grow older that is going to be kind of the silver bullet that provides that long-term change that we're hoping for uh from a from a political standpoint we want to Foster an environment in which children growing up are comfortable having those conversations that we as adults have found it so difficult to have we we've only been having those conversations over Twitter and it's been pretty volatile and there's an Avenue to make that not be the future or at least try to make that not be the future um and then you talk about social media I'll admit the Boston Children's Museum where late adopters to social media and still uh I'm pretty disappointed in the way we go about deploying our social media tactics and trying to engage an audience beyond the walls of the museum but I do think that again social media can be construed as a way that connects people but it could also be depending on your semantics and your your Viewpoint it can be a way that divides people right depending on what your exposure is what your bubble is and so for us we like to use social media as as a way to allow families and children to express themselves in a way which is Meaningful to them and not in a way which is antagonistic with others so we've done programs where we allow them to upload YouTube Vlogs based on the projects they're doing some maker project they're working on and for us that's a way for us to engage children and families in a way where it's not about the social media itself it's about giving them the avenue to get a broader audience but also in a way where if they're five years old and us and their caregivers are coaching them on how to go about being internet citizens in a more Community oriented way that's a conversation we can have and we can jump into so for us again it's it's sort of jumping into the part of the conversation that's relevant to us as a children's museum so um yeah I think that's sort of probably more than you wanted to hear but yeah you know one thing that that you just mentioned that gives me uh sort of an idea of how social media can really be leveraged positively um with an emerging technology like this is you know showing people the ways that web3 and blockchain are enabling parts of systems that they've never had a chance to see behind the curtain on before our food system our health care System um imagine if we were able to go to some of the people that are um you know have sort of enabling these Technologies in ways that will allow them to be more traceable um to deal with breakdowns in the system when you know I've been reading about how blockchain can help with food management problems um where there may be spoilage along the the way and you'd be hopefully able to both uh get a sense of responsibility which you were talking about but also stop um you know a foodborne disease from spreading in the tracks and other things having health care if you could get people to talk in their own words and highlight the people that are doing this work through the lens of a science museum or a children's museum which enjoy a lot of trust because I don't think I have to tell people here there's not a lot of trust among the general public in some of these emerging technologies that are are computer enabled and I have to tell you they don't trust the universities that much either um and and we as cultural institutions have maybe more trust than than is warranted but people sort of trust us to think very carefully um about how the products and processes of Science and Technology connect to their lives this is a way that I can imagine we could show people why this is an important uh technology why they're working on some of the biggest problems and why it's important for them to keep their eyes and ears open as voters as consumers um to think a little bit about what this might mean before the sort of Technologies become so well entrenched and deeply polarized that all they can do is joined aside in in weighing in on social media which is really not very helpful for our world there is an opportunity for people to sort of become engaged Upstream with a technology like this and learn more um in an anticipatory fashion uh that I think could be really really good for the world if it was leveraged properly and to bring that kind of back full circle that trust being the primary sort of large-scale currency that the museum and cultural organizations wield it's because of that trust that Children's Museums especially actually exhibit a lot of reluctance to adopt a lot of new emerging Technologies because they don't want to lose that trust in favor of trying to maybe contrive a technological experience into the museum experience that has to be more thought out it takes more time but that's why I feel like museums still hold some of that trust because there's a lot of careful thought research and care and passion that goes into the implementation of things like that in the you know basis of trust I believe it's a research by the American Association of museums where over 90 percent of a constituency of a county Support a museum being built or in their Locale and this is a bipartisan approach because they see us museums as educational now people can go to and learn from and so it's really a standard pillar in that sense so based on that you know and the adaption adaptation measures now you're talking with blockchain and also political you know resources for museums you know in the education the well thought out approach the forums of the knowledge of your learning of our experience of uh you know the knowledge of how to implement recycling programs and so forth and and learning you know um you know approaches with with um Ai and you know as well and also the Children's Museum of you know the virtual reality and so forth uh where do you see the adapt like what adaptation measures do you see happening in the near future uh with you know blockchain or you know this kind of technology is it a few years out is are there resources is it five years out of a virtual scavenger hunts or you know nft scavenger hunts partnering with blockchain platforms to provide accessibility you know such as devices to bring you know to underserved communities um you know or talking to the educational institution so that they could have a dialogue to understand you know what the social accountability responsibility is I don't know the answer to your question um partially because of some of the stuff Neil brought up um with respect to a little bit of of trepidation um to have people think we're trying to sell people something when it comes to uh museums we think really hard about not putting trade show exhibits in front of people because um we want them to encounter uh new technologies in ways that they think along the messages that we carefully curate for what we want people to be thinking when they encounter something the questions we want them to be asking um but I could imagine I could imagine especially if a museum in its store or its uh ticketing system or um you know it's visitor tracking or it's messaging if it was going to uh consider or even begin implementing um some of these Technologies It's a Wonderful opportunity to not only say here's what we're doing and why we're doing it but also here's where this field is going and why it's important for you to think about what it can do it can help connect people to um you know new ways of reaching people um through accessibility it can um you know make things more Global in a way that can make the world smaller and flatter um and here's where some of this might go wrong uh if we don't think about how to include the perspectives and priorities from everyone and the data sets from everyone to help train how these things are being implemented in the world and here's some examples of how this has gone uh you know not the way that we would like with prior or analogous examples of systems that were put into place and didn't really have the kind of real-time participatory technology assessment that we wish we had as a world the good news is I think that there are much better tools now for getting ideas from people rather than just putting Technologies in front of people whether or not they know it and actually asking people what they value the question is are private sector sort of Institutions and the researchers that are enabling it in a position to listen and act on that feedback I don't think that the museums are going to work well as marketing arms for blockchain I do think though that they could be really really good market research tools to get a sense of what people see and what they really wish they understood more so that when people are crafting their messages about how this is hitting the world you give them the context that they feel like they need to trust the technology to think about it rather than blindly reject it because we know um from experience with similar Technologies nanotechnology Human Genome editing um you know any number of biotechnologies people reject the technology in a background in in a um a vacuum rather but if they have an understanding of what some of the applications are why it can be useful and some of the value propositions they will think carefully and actually have pretty sophisticated and interesting ideas about how the technology can be implanted implemented in a responsible way that meets the needs of those communities that have historically been excluded and stigmatized from having a voice in the adoption and implementation of these Technologies we just have to ask them and so I think people like the ones in this room have to think how can I ask the question in a way that doesn't feel like marketing and isn't yeah I'll go even further and say I actually think that especially at a children's museum this is something that I think that there is a bit of conflict where we're kind of fighting against you know I feel like every day we're adding the average human is adding three more minutes to how much time they spend on their phone because they can and they don't need to spend it off their phone and that's three more minutes that's going to take away from them visiting a museum going to a mall or I mean like instead of a mall they're gonna shop online instead of going to a restaurant they're going to just have someone drop it off for them all these places where people meet uh and Thrive together are are dropping numbers day by day and so a children's museum which especially thrives on trying to bring children together for social emotional experiences it's kind of a difficult place to to try and uh upsell or talk up something which is trying to not necessarily keep people apart but make it easier for for things to be at your fingertips so that you don't actually have to go somewhere to do something and this is not to over generalization over generalize every technological approach into one bucket but there is a certain sense that the the museum being a a brick and mortar space that people come to and they trust that they want to come to because they they trust the experience they're going to have um it's not that they're that blockchain and smart contract technology does not have a place in that the place in that will actually be shared by the place it has in a lot of other Industries like completing transactions and creating agreements and and you know the museum has a 10 000 collections uh historical collections items from around the world why not create a system where that that smart contract technology can make it efficient to loan out those collections items to other museums that's already happening and will happen uh you know nft uh art and digital art are becoming a part of the same conversation day by day so there are ways in which is going to happen I just don't know if the museum is going to be the right Avenue to Champion that but as David said it's going to be an Avenue to explore the more like exactive ways of implementing things where that's going to be almost like a challenge for people here is to find meaningful touch points between this technology and the audience that sort of still holding on to that you know what we want to be off of our phones we want to actually uh hold on to a bit of this quote-unquote like night lifestyle and we want to make sure we're focusing on being Hands-On we don't want our children to be on the iPad until whatever age I think that has is a new challenge for for folks in this room and Beyond is how can you find meaningful ways to engage those segments of the population and not make them feel left behind which I think has become a through line of this conversation is making it accessible is not the same as making it meaningful and and making it something that can be used is not the same as making it something that is Meaningful for someone to use so I think that's where you know throw it back to you a cultural organization is a public Steward towards the you know responsibility towards the adaption adaptation of Technology working with you know other other institutions and the public at large as well as you know engineering and empathy like you said um and you know bringing in in the processes and and testing the waters um I think our you know we have our time so I have a couple more questions at the same time um you know we're in Boston as Boston you know entity uh are you taking lead nationally internationally you know globally is there a society that you could bring everyone together across the world in terms of you know the meaningfulness like you said instead of a divisiveness and you know maybe politicization or the profiteering you know and so forth same time the you know Community Building to you know create communication and correspondence and yeah I'll give three really quick examples of of how I think museums can be part of what you're talking about yeah I'll be fast one is citizen science people are creating data and sharing things about their communities and I think web3 can help to make that more trusted when it gets into the realm of Science and Technology and allow people to create content the second idea I think is through engineering education Neil mentioned that and the museum is part of global and National networks to do that um through the lens of children um and the the things that they prize and then the third thing is using these cultural institutions as opportunities to Showcase and get people's ideas together that is there we're listening to you um we're happy to partner with you and thinking about how to how to sort of foster responsible Innovation yeah I mean I don't have much to add beyond that I'll just say really quick trying to create an innovation experience in Boston is like trying to put on like a fitness clinic and an Olympic Village it's you already know what's going on and so it's it's more about trying to I come back to the same pillars again create that confidence not just with children but also with grown-ups who don't have that familiarity to know that they can still lend to the learning they can still lend to the Innovative experience in a more indirect way and I think that's something that museums can continue to do especially Children's Museums where they're just starting out so thank you so much thank you thank you thanks for joining us thank you for the audience and uh appreciate your time foreign [Music]