Lumberman's Museum "Computer-Free Capstone" Idea/Thoughts

It’s a hard prospect to think about a computer or technology-free approach to a project that in part hinges upon the purchase of a television and other related technology. In essence, the “media room” suggests that there will be media of some type within it. However, I can work with the spirit of this idea, to try to bring it to life without the use of computer technology. The whole purpose of this plan of mine to help the Lumberman’s Museum is to give them some form of new content that will excite people coming to the museum, and allow them to better connect with the exhibits they will find within. In reality this begins with a nice television and sound system, but where do you begin when there is nothing of the sort?

The problem the museum faces is that its content is not engaging to the younger generations. It has had the same exhibits and look since before I was born, and has barely changed since. The museum itself is sort of as historical as the items it houses. New visitors to the museum are not as engaged with the content as people would have been previously. So, the solution is to find some way to “jumpstart” the minds of the people before they go through the museum proper. To me, the reason why people aren’t interested in the museum any more is because they don’t understand the woods and just what it meant to work as a logger or lumberman. Even twenty or thirty years ago, people in the area were more in tune with the logging industry and could understand what it meant to use all the old tools and machines. I would see my job, in this anti-technology stance, to bring some semblance of this old way of life to the people who were entering the museum. It would be like taking them through the woods before taking them through the museum, so that they understood the conditions. There would need to be some way to set the items of the museum against the backdrop of the forests they were used in… “a museum without walls,” as Jon has told me on several occasions now. It wouldn’t really be prudent to actually take these really old and rusty tools out into the forest and actually re-use them… the possibility that they would break is very high, and nobody wants that. But I think a tour of the woods, set in the mindset of a lumberman, would really make people think more clearly about what all these old tools mean and why the museum is still important.