The next logical step for Google is to use the Streetview technology inside public buildings. I’m sure they would get lots of volunteers to wear special camera-helmets to walk through the world’s most famous public buildings.

Finally, our afternoon last Friday at the C3 Spring Retreat was spent discussing how academia and industry might work together and putting that discussion into action through a series of breakout discussions built around topics of particular interest t…

We have been experimenting with cell-phone audio tours at the museum where I spend my Saturdays. Since there is nothing stopping anyone from dialing the number and doing the tour outside of the museum, I always thought it would be an interesting displaced performance to do the tour in a completely different museum. Or outdoors.

I’ve also thought how interesting it would be as the technology becomes cheaper and the deployment is easier with iPods and mobile devices to more readily offer tours for different interests or different knowledge levels — don’t know much about art? Take the novice tour. Masters in American history? Take the expert tour.

My one concern. I do hope, as a Deaf/HoH adult, that these interactive tours move beyond just audio to text and images fed over mobile networks. Right now, museums often hand out printed versions of their audio components, but that feels like a solution grafted on, instead of integrated accessibility from the beginning. It also doesn’t address the easy deployment and ability to make adjustments that networked interpretation represents.

This deserves a place in science fiction, not because it’s so far off but because it seems like it has an enormous potential to impact social memory. Man, I thought the question of “whose voice” was important with TEXTBOOK writing.

This also makes me think of Googlemaps and all the spots people have highlighted and added their descriptions of and connections to.

Thanks for this post, I’m going to keep thinking about it.