Thinking about The Information Age

In late October 2014, a new exhibition opened at The Science Museum in London. Titled " The Information Age: Six Networks That Changed Our World " [1], the exhibition received widespread publicity when it was opened by Queen Elizabeth who used this as the opportunity to send her first tweet, using the account @BritishMonarchy. " It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R. " The museum proudly claims that the exhibition had been several years in planning, and is their biggest and most ambitious gallery to date. Oriented in a wheel-like structure into six sections or zones, one is immediately drawn to the giant and bizarre structure at the centre; a six-meter (20-ft) high copper and wood aerial tuning inductor from Rugby Radio Station. It was built in the 1920s for the General Post Office (forerunner to BT), to carry radiotelephony between the United Kingdom and America, and was the most powerful radio transmitter in the world at that time. The circle itself is divided into six 'zones' representing key information and communication technology networks: The Cable, The Telephone Exchange, Broadcast, The Constellation, The Cell and The Web. The historical range of these six deliberately extends well beyond popular ideas about computers and associated technologies such as smart phones and social networks, so visitors to the exhibition should find themselves moving from what has become common and everyday to more esoteric and thought-provoking aspects of these technologies and the contexts from which they developed. Moreover although the target age range is given as 11 and upwards, those in their 40s and above seem to be most attracted, given the massive changes in these technologies that have occurred in their lifetimes. So many of the exhibits draw frequent comments along the lines of " We had one of those at home " , or " That's exactly like the one I used to have ". Some of the coverage criticised the failure to indicate the layout of the exhibits in the six zones, leaving it to the visitor to work this out for themselves if they did not go straight to the centre-piece. While others have pointed out that some of the links across the six zones are underplayed or missing. But on the other hand the range of exhibits together with the background materials and …