Storytelling the Information Age

The Science Museum’s new Information Age gallery looks at the last 200 years of information and communication technologies, inviting visitors to take a long view on our ability to generate, share and store information. We focused the gallery on six technological ‘networks’ and chose transforming events – or moments in history – that show how people have created and shaped each new wave of social, economic and technological change. Information Age moves away from a chronological, technocentric approach to interpreting science and technology, focusing instead on storytelling, audience engagement and personal accounts of cultural, economic and social change through technology. The gallery aims to enthuse visitors through personal accounts and distinctive stories, and in doing so required a fresh approach in its use of new media. Information Age represented a game changer for the museum in terms of its historic collections, placing over 800 objects on show, many of which had not been on public display. These were not displayed to act as illustrations of technological progress, but as actors in history which brought people together, supported existing hierarchies and disrupted other social structures. Through the gallery we had to find new ways to work with technology and invite visitors to consider the objects in new ways. This paper gives an overview of the storytelling approach in the gallery, focusing on one specific development using innovative transparent screen technology to develop a modern day form of a traditional museum interpretation, the diorama.