Understanding Museums in the Digital Age: Extensions of Marshall McLuhan's Insights

Liss Jeffery, University of Toronto

Workshop
Wednesday, April 22, 1998
1:30 pm - 5:00 pm

One key conclusion is that museums should not seek to do old work with new web media, but instead should explore the properties of these new media and of the emerging "digital literacies" that cyber-visitors bring to their virtual and actual museum visits. In determining an appropriate response to the question of the web, the issue is not technology so much as it is one of understanding the role of museums, their objects, and the knowledge networks that museums make posible among experts and audiences. In this sense, the museum and the web museum can be envisioned productively as mutual contributors to the reinvention of a hybrid form of knowledge media. In conclusion it is argued that McLuhan's insight into the need to create "counter-environments" in order to train awareness can provide guidance for those who seek to revision the meaning of the museum for a digital age.

Held at McLuhan's Coach House, on the campus of the University of Toronto [within walking distance of the conference hotel] this workshop will provide a seminar-like atmosphere for pondering the implications of the Web for the museum.