Democratising Innovation

Ironically, the very interesting article about FLOSS and customer innovation by Lawrence Lessig in the latest LRB is only available to read online if you're a subscriber.

Eric von Hippel's theories of "democratising innovation" are just the sort of thing that need a bigger take up in the museum sector. When I was at the Museums and the Web conference earlier this year, something I found gob-smacking was the mother-knows-best approach to digitising collections and making them accessible. In fact, so incongruous were me and my fellow speaker in the set up that we ended up being shoved in the "anthropology" (social curiosity) section, when what we were actually talking about was about encouraging a democratised approach to engagement with objects and their interpretation. So many museum websites are still about pushing as much information out as possible in a sub-CD-rom environment, taking for granted the fact that everyone wants to come and Learn-with-a-Capital-L, that it seems almost astonishing people want to use them at all. As I rush to a sweeping generalisation, the greatest benefit I get from the Internet is the deconstructed/decentralised knowledge-base. Museum culture is so wedded to the nature of authority files that the threat of "knowledge fracture" is all-but terrifying for them, and seems to guarantee a strange symbiosis in which the museums themselves become mothballed entities; dinosaurs that house (in some cases) dinosaurs.

Anyway, jeez, where did that come from? Hopefully I will remember to get off my soapbox this morning before my first footstep on the path to sure celebrity: this morning I am being interviewed for the BBC Three Counties Radio Weekend Breakfast Show, which appears to start at 4.30 am on Saturday morning, earliness fans. It's quite possible that more people over hear me while I'm using my mobile phone on the bus, so am trying not to worry about it ...