Research Roundup
January 26, 2010

Tools for the future
The near future
Social trends, etc.
Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest
Refresh and reflect

Tools for the future:
  1. Is the camera-phone good or bad for museums? asks Stuart Jeffries, a columnist for the UK's Guardian newspaper. He starts with a scenario that has become increasingly common:

    There are three people standing in front of a glass case in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Each of us is trying to get a good view of the so-called Becket Casket. ... It is is one of the most lovely things you can hope to see on a bleak January morning. Only one problem. The bloke in the middle is hogging the full-frontal position, clearly the best view to savour Becket's martyrdom. He has been there for five minutes now – not, so far as I can judge, appreciating the boldly engraved figures against a brilliant blue background, but meaninglessly, endlessly, exasperatingly snapping the same view. He has that dead-eyed, mouth-gaping, eminently slappable face we all have when we hold our camera phones a foot in front of our faces and click, click, click. 

    "But moaning isn't enough," he concludes. "We also have to wonder what happens to us when technology increasingly gives us our windows on the world. One thought is that the camera-phone changes our experience of the world for good rather than evil" (for example, by facilitating interactivity and promoting virtual communities). 
  2. Elon University and the Pew Internet Project invite everyone to help imagine the future of the Internet. A nice example of crowdsourcing predictions.
  3. Another way to predict the future is to let children imagine it. According to the trendspotters at PSFK, "Future-thinker Shane Hope explores the cultural and technological norms of the distant future, expressing them through the fictional schoolwork diaries of children in the era of 'memochems, divvies, and exocortical existence.'"
  4. ASAE, the umbrella group for professional associations in the United States, offers three Visions for the Future of Associations (circa 2030). Many of the insights (such as "the changing face of volunteerism") will are useful for forward-looking museums as well.  

The near future:
  1. Experts Urge Earlier Start to Teaching Science. Education Week discusses the "growing interest among academic experts and educators in teaching science to preschoolers." Unfortunately, the article does not discuss the role of museums in building science literacy for the 21st century.
  2. Forecasters in the hotel business say that the "only way to go is up in 2010" as luxury and business travel continue to languish.

Social trends, etc.:
  1. From November, but hardly outdated: The New Female Consumer: The Rise of the Real Mom. "This Advertising Age and JWT white paper explores what multiple generations of American women want when it comes to family, work and life in the 21st century, decades after the women's liberation movement. It focuses in depth on Generation X (ages 30 to 44) and millennial (ages 18 to 29) mothers and how they differ from their older counterparts. It also examines how marketers can and should improve communications that target this demographic."
  2. Earlier this month, the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University published a report on Maryland's nonprofit sector. At the state level, "the number of jobs at ... nonprofit organizations increased in 2008 despite the recession." For the rest of the country, the important takeaway is that "nonprofits have been counter-cyclical forces in the economy, driving growth and hiring more people even in downturns." (these quotes come from the coverage in the Washington Post). The one major exception is nonprofit groups in the arts and culture sector, including museums, which typically see a drop in employment during recessions. See the full report at http://www.ccss.jhu.edu/pdfs/NED_Bulletins/States/MD_33.pdf.
  3. According to some recent reports, the gender gap in higher education is starting to close again. For a number of years, the ranks of new college graduates have included more women than men. But now, a number of community colleges say that "enrollment of male students this past fall either outpaced or equaled that of female students." (This report led one observer to ask, "Are Men Realizing that College Is The New High School?") And according to the American Council on Education, "the gender gap in college enrollments [at all kinds of postsecondary institutions] has largely leveled off, with the key exception of Latino enrollments, where men are falling further behind women."  It's not clear, however, where the bump in male enrollment will yield a bump in degree completion of comparable magnitude! See coverage of the ACE report here and here.
  4. Latinos Online: Narrowing the Gap. According to researchers at the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the digital divide is also shrinking. "From 2006 to 2008, internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points, from 54% to 64%. In comparison, the rates for whites rose four percentage points, and the rates for blacks rose only two percentage points during that time period. Though Latinos continue to lag behind whites, the gap in internet use has shrunk considerably." (Perhaps with this research in mind, Media Week urged its readers to pay more attention to young, male videojugadores when marketing to Hispanic consumers.)
  5. From the National Science Foundation, the latest release of Science and Engineering Indicators. This is the best compilation available of quantitative information about science and engineering in the United States and around the world (including informal science education). Among the other facts in the report: In 2008, 59 percent of Americans indicated that they had visited an informal science venue during the previous year. Half said they had visited a zoo or aquarium and over one-quarter had visited a "natural history museum" (27 percent) or a "science and technology museum" (26 percent). One in three Americans had visited an art museum and 64 percent had visited a public library. 
  6. From AARP, Connecting and Giving: A Report on How Mid-life and Older Americans Spend Their Time, Make Connections and Build Communities. Among the highlights of this survey: Mid-life and older Americans are less likely to join organizations than a decade ago and contribute less total time as volunteers, though the rate of volunteering has remained steady.
  7. According to a survey commissioned by Memorex (remember, they used to make cassette tapes), Today’s Parents Crave More Family "WeTime": "Whether it's as simple as dancing in the kitchen or huddling around the television for family movie night, today's parents crave more family 'WeTime' together—up to three more times per week—but cite a lack of finances (40 percent), lack of interest from kids (21 percent) and a lack of ideas (18 percent) among the challenges in creating special WeTime moments with their family." But finding WeTime is tough when "8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week)," as reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest:
  1. In Europe, the Arts Ask for Alms. The New York Times reports on the "Americanization" of support for the arts in Europe as government funding becomes scarcer.
  2. The January issue of GOOD magazine is devoted to "Slow Culture," in which they ask "some of the world’s most prominent futurists to explain why slowness might be as important to the future as speed." 

Refresh and reflect:
  1. 17 Museum Admissions Buttons From Around the World (courtesy of Fast Company). With a brief history of this essential museum technology. 
  2. One panda is cute, but "100 rotating pandas [that] track the movement of viewers" as they walk across a gallery is downright creepy.   

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