Starting a superstructure is only the beginning. The real task is envisioning what it can do, how it will work, and who you need to work with. If you're not a member, consider joining now. If you are a member, be bold, jump in, and use the superstructure to start organizing for survival. Edit it, add to the vision, and make it real, online and off. And don't forget to rave.

More about Superstructures

  • Collecting the Future

    How can we document and preserve the stories and artifacts of the crisis?
  • Founder: suzanne

    ,

  • Who We Need
    Curators, archivists, journalists, collectors, Civil Conscripts:  we need people who can collect  the material culture of 2019, preserve it and offer it as a resource to the world.  We need people from all over the world to collect and to build digital and brick-and-mortar (or rammed-earth, or strawbale) museums.  We want to coordinate with the Civil Conscripts in New Orleans to save art and history from that drowning city.
  • How to join
    We need to find answers to these questions:  How can we create a distributed global collecting network?  How can we preserve artifacts amidst upheaval?  How can we prioritize a global collecting plan?  
  • Mission

    If we don't learn from the past, we won't have a future. The enormous changes in society and technology that we are experiencing should be documented and preserved and disseminated to be understood.  Our mission as historians, curators and global citizens is to collect, preserve and interpret artifacts, documents, photos, video and other traces of the global struggles of 2019.  By building new networks of collaborative collecting, we can curate our own lives. 

  • What we can accomplish

    • Add to our collective wisdom of the human race, in order to survive other superthreats far out into the future. Future generations will look at us, and admire how we manage to bridge differences, and look to us for inspiration when they face their suprethreat.

       Provide comfort, support and continuity to people displaced from their communities. In a time of great upheaval and stress, we can ensure that some of the things people hold most dear--their stories, their culture, their heritage--is preserved for the future.

      We will use the mediums available to us, the Web, in our journals, diaries, recordings, videos, to create a snapshot of how we manage to survive this difficult period. Our records, our blogs, all of these have to be archived, how we worked together, or how we fell apart - all of these should be recorded...

  • How this superstruct works
  • Other information
  • Discuss this superstructure

    • I think it's important for us to start offering workshops to individuals, teaching them how to collect and share their own artifacts.  The best global collection network will rely on as many nodes as possible.  I know that there have always been guides to help curators and conservators learn how to do this, but we need something short and focused on preserving heritage and stories, not so much precious artifacts.

      Now, more than ever, museums are limited in their capacity to house and care for their own collections. It is useful and realistic to turn every passionate individual into a potential collector and "curator", creating a national collection that does not have to reside in a museum. This requires training, as noted above, but it also requires massive data collection and sharing. As with a collection in a museum, a distributed national collection is only useful and accessible if it is documented and the data is accurate, timely and accessible. Can we create a national collections database that tracks the material held by private individuals for the public trust?

      And how can we encourage private individuals to care for material culture not just for themselves but in stewardship for the public? This might be something akin to the process by which a person can get a tax break for putting a conservation easement on land, or historic property designation on a structure. The Federal and state governments could offer tax breaks to citizen curators in return for a commitment to care for, document and share this material, and to pass it on to another appropriate guardian when the time comes.

      Great idea!  Let's talk about what our collecting network needs to do and how we can disseminate information about collecting practices.  Maybe we could have a short video series.  It would be helpful and inspiring if we could connect with our colleagues in New Orleans to see how they're working.  Another thing that might jumpstart our collecting network is thinking up a catchy name for citizen-collectors.  Just being called a "super-empowered hopeful individual" makes me feel well, more empowered about building the future, so maybe we could do the same for our collecting network volunteers.    

       Speaking for those in New Orleans:   When our board finally realized that no matter what they did the city would indeed be closing it was almost too late to find places for artifacts. Luckily, as things got worse and worse here we reached out to similar institutions and began a huge lending project. We set up dozens of traveling exhibits, and made sure that all our artifacts has been fully dgitized including all of our 3D artifacts. (We also strategically saved copies of those files on servers all over the world in hopes that if one was corrupted we would still have other copies that weren't.) Each and every staff collections staff member began connecting with their alumni programs and professional associations to see who was where and if they might "borrow" something from us. In the end we were able to lend about 50% of the collection. Its only half, but when you consider that its thousands of objects its make moving alot easier.I would like to see a network where museums can reach out to each other and say "Hey, if you need a borrower we are looking for ___" or "I need to lend_____, who can use it?"

      It\'s wonderful to hear about the saving through dispersal of some Nola collections.

      How are we going to physically transport loans?  How can we make sure collectors can safely transport artifacts?  Maybe they can go through the New Pony Express.  Or, as suggested above, we can focus more on collecting stories.

       Collecting stories will work for many museums, but not all. What if your mission statement relegates you to a time frame where collection oral histories isn't possible anymore? What else can be a story besides an oral history...books, a dairy, letters...but those are still artifacts to have to care for and keep safe. If stories are oral histories you still have to consider how to house and keep the tapes safe. Plus, there is always the progression of sound technology that makes one format outmoded before you can even transfer everyting that you have. 

  • Related stories
  • Other superstructures we are collaborating with
Edit

IMPORTANT WRITING TIP! Our servers occasionally time out (usually after an hour)! So if you plan to spend more than a few minutes writing, why don't you prepare your text offline? When you're ready, refresh this page and then cut and paste your content here.

Nominate For A Badge

Badge:
More detail on badges

High Ping Quotient

HighPingQuotient

Longbroading

Longbroading

Open Authorship

OpenAuthorship

Cooperation Radar

CooperationRadar

Multi-Capitalism

MultiCapitalism

Mobbability

Mobbability

Protovation

Protovation

Influency

Influency

Signal/Noise Management

NoiseManagement

Emergensight

Emergensight



NOMINATE CANCEL