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It IS about the technology

July 8th, 2010
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“It’s not about the technology.”

I hear this meme invoked all the time at “museum tech” conferences nowadays. Indeed, I myself have said this a bunch of times when developing (or at least contemplating) a new content-based technology project at the Museum. A big drive in my work at the Met has always been to get constituents talking about the content first and foremost, and worrying about the technology platform(s) later. (Aside: Nancy Proctor makes this point better than I do in her recent Museums and the Web paper The Museum Is Mobile.) This hasn’t always been an easy task, as often it’s excitement about the technology that has caused the constituent to contact me in the first place, but I have nevertheless always endeavored to put content first and tech second in any discussions about a possible project.

But…

This approach only goes so far, and we need to be careful about where and when we apply it, lest our thinking become too prejudiced. My concern is that thinking this way causes us to act as if content is always inherently platform agnostic, which is rarely true.

I think the issue here really is context, which is unique for each technology platform, even when the content is similar. A kiosk has the context of a museum around it, a mobile device has the context of location, the web has the context of (possibly) no context at all. Each of these situations demand different approaches to developing, filtering, and presenting content.

I don’t mean to say that the “it’s not about the technology” idea has no value–it’s still a bad idea to jump into a project with no reason for being other than exciting technology. However, we do need to be cautious about understanding the nuances of each platform, and adapting our content strategies accordingly.

Word.

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  • Bruce

    I usually claim that it’s about the experience, but I think we’re thinking very similarly here. The technology is very important, you just want the technology to disappear for the user and let them concentrate what feels like a perfectly natural and compelling experience.

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  • http://www.mediacombo.net/blog Robin White Owen

    Clients tend to get caught up in the excitement of a new, sexy hardware device – and they’re not the only ones! New devices/platforms represent opportunities to present content in new contexts/situations. We as producers, curators and media specialists need to figure out how to present the content to take advantage of how people use each device or platform.

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  • http://museummobile.info Nancy Proctor

    As always, Koven, you bring important nuance and enhanced understanding to the conversation. It’s true that I at least have use the phrase, “It’s not about the technology” often as a provocation, to encourage us to abandon the hope of the ‘solution’ to the museum’s problems and needs lying in a new gadget, app, or platform. But as you say, it’s also important to remember that content is almost never platform agnostic (if ever…). I like both your and Bruce’s emphasis on context and experience, but I’m also thinking that the next push has to be for content standards, so the we give ourselves at least a slightly better chance of that hard-earned content surviving to the next generation of technology. It can be damned expensive to produce good content, and hard to justify for a one-off or a platform that will be obsolete within 2 years.

    Titus Bicknell suggested in his recent “DAM Manifesto” that content providers should put the responsibility on the platform, not the archivist (or content producer), to deliver assets in the format that the platform requires. Is this is a content + technology strategy with the potential to scale into the future?

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  • Jeremy

    it’s what the technology let’s you do with the content, right? And as you say, that’s a lot to do with context. WRT the context of mobiles you mention location and I’d add, what people are doing – the mental and social space they’re in when accessing a resource on a mobile device. Sometimes this may be essentially the same as a kiosk (say, enhancing the experience of a gallery you’re in), but the device happens to be in your hand, yet the technologies enable/predisposed one to do different things (e.g. more social thing on your phone). Other times the activity or social ‘context’ are very different – say, shopping or looking for something to do whilst sitting on a delayed train (as I am now). Location is tied to activity and sociality, but not the whole picture.

  • http://smarthistory.org Beth Harris

    I often find myself thinking first about the technology and I think that’s because I often need visuals when I begin thinking about the content I want to develop and ways to deploy that content – thinking about the technology helps me think through possibilities. Technology folks like to say, leave the technology to us. But I am not sure that works – I think content developers need to know their technology too.