MUSEUM FATIGUE

MUSEUM FATIGUE

Main menu

Skip to content
  • About Museum Fatigue
  • Mystery Objects
  • Mythologies
  • About me

Category Archives: Technology

Show Grid Show List

Post navigation

Milanote is My Tool For Teaching in a Pandemic

August 6, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

This past spring semester, when all classes went online during the Coronavirus pandemic, I was suddenly in need of a way to keep my students connected and able to work together. I needed something that ideally would work for my discussion-heavy senior seminar that was working through some tough texts, and also be useful for intense group video documentary work being done in a visual anthropology class. Everyone was under a lot of stress so I wanted something to which […]

Categories: Teaching, Technology • Tags: group work, Milanote, online teaching, remote teaching, software

Leave a comment

“Scan & Go” at Watson’s: Checking Out on the Sales Floor

January 24, 2019 by Museum Fatigue

Yesterday for the first time I experienced a retail store employee as a “checkout point.” I visited a nearby Watson’s store to buy a pack of Bandaids and when I went to the cashier’s counter to pay for my purchase, I noticed a sign that said, “Scan & Go” in English and Chinese. I was a bit mystified because for most of the past two years I always pay with things by “scanning and going”—pulling out my phone, opening Alipay, […]

Categories: Digital Payments, Retail, Surveillance, Technology • Tags: Alipay, WeChat

Leave a comment

“Liu Xiaobo” and the Power and Weakness of the Digital

July 14, 2017 by Museum Fatigue

char nametoberemoved[11] = {‘L’, ‘i’, ‘u’, ‘ ‘, ‘X’, ‘i’,’a’, ‘o’, ‘b’, ‘o’, ‘\0’}; When he died yesterday, Liu Xiaobo got quite a lot of press in the West. A Nobel Peace Prize winner and notable participant in the Tiananmen protests that culminated in the events of June 4th, 1989, he was an iconic dissident figure. In fact, I have a hunch that when we look back from some future point, Liu Xiaobo’s passing will have also marked the eclipsing […]

Categories: China, Memory, Technology • Tags: censorship, Digital Culture, Liu Xiaobo, WeChat

Leave a comment

Have Mobile Phones In the Classroom Reached Their Calculator Moment?

February 9, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

Last week, while reviewing our class syllabus on the first day, I made a decision to do a little experiment. Rather than make the announcement that mobile phones should be turned off during class, I did the opposite. I told my visual anthropology class that unrestricted use of mobile phones in class would be allowed this semester. Allowing all students to use their devices freely at all times seems very counterintuitive. In fact, even now I am concerned that in […]

Categories: Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Technology • Tags: calculator, classroom experience, iPhone, mobile phone, technology, TI-35

10

Mystery Object #19: Breasts and Personal Technology

May 31, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Subject to continual upgrade cycles and constant and dependable obsolesce, our personal technology resist the attachment and love that we develop for them. While we take them everywhere and learn to depend on them for communication, entertainment and even to find a bite to eat—the technology pushes back and resists our advances—never retaining the object-histories that might give them human meaning over time. With no history our personal technology never develop the patinas of value that speak to their interaction […]

Categories: Bodies, Gender, Mystery Objects, Technology • Tags: accessories, affection, breasts, crack chic, iPhone, mouse pad, personal technology, puni puni, steampunk

Leave a comment

Memories: 128 Megabytes, $125 Dollars, Circa 2002

February 16, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

There is something melancholy about old technology. A few days ago, while cleaning my office, I came across a small, black, USB-powered, flash drive. It wasn’t just any drive, but the first drive—the first flash drive that I ever purchased. It brought back memories of my first teaching experiences, and its memory size amazed me. Back in the fall of 2002, I used a bit of one of my first real paychecks to buy the drive at CompUSA. It was […]

Categories: Everyday Things, Technology • Tags: Flash Drive, melancholy, Smart Drive, USB Drive, www.universalsmartdrive.com

Leave a comment

“A Cuisine of Gestures and Words”

January 16, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“…communication is a cuisine of gestures and words, of ideas and information, with its recipes and its subtleties, its auxiliary instruments and its neighboring effects, its distortions and its failures. It is false to believe henceforth that electronic and computerized objects will do away with the activity of users. From the hi-fi stereo to the VCR, the diffusion of these devices multiplies ruses and provokes the inventiveness of users…and, thus become producers of their own little “cultural industry…In turn, this […]

Categories: Quotes, Technology • Tags: communication, Michel de Certeau, technology, The Practice of Everyday Life

Leave a comment

Post navigation

Recent Posts

  • F*ck E-Learning. Snow Days Teach Us Something More Important.
  • Why Don’t Minnesotans Have a Word For This Thing That Gives Us So Much Joy?
  • Breakout Discussion Groups in Minecraft
  • Student Feedback on Digital Anthropology Class in Three Modalities: Zoom, Minecraft and (Pandemic) In-person
  • A Different Sense of Space in Mineclass

Category Cloud

Anthropology Assignments Bodies Books China Consumption COVID Spring Education End of Times Fieldwork Food Higher Education How To Museums Mystery Objects Mythologies Nostalgia Objects of Power Photo Essays Politics Random Reflections Representation Scripts Surveillance Teaching Tourism Uncategorized Video clips Visual Anthropology Visual Anthropology Class

Archives

Blogroll

  • Anthrodendum
  • China Digital Times
  • Cyborgology
  • io9
  • Living Anthropologically
  • Museum Anthropology
  • Old Dirt, New Thoughts
  • The Ludologist
  • This Sociological Life

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com
  • Follow Following
    • MUSEUM FATIGUE
    • Join 183 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • MUSEUM FATIGUE
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...