Extinct Media Museum Tokyo

extinct-media-museum.blog.jp67 pointsby sohkamyung14 comments

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Hacker News

   Upon payment of an admission fee, visitors are free to take photos, record video, and scan 3D images of the collection.

This is so refreshing as a mindset. Compared to some countries where they are used to ask you to pay an additional fee just to take personal pictures.

by greatgib

It seems like most of the collection is post-1960, leaving out many earlier types of media such as the ediphone and graphophone cylinders.

https://obsoletemedia.org/ediphone/

by ilamont

I think this nostalgia is useful for reminding us there are aesthetic forms beyond what Jony Ive et al happened to design and became the dominant form factor. The 2000s explosion of MP3 players had a lot of little ideas like the iRiver Clix had 'press the side of the device' as a navigation system

by firasd

Wow, a DAT Walkman [1]! I forgot that this existed, but I am remembering now that I heard about them in college and desperately wanted one. I was (and still am) an avid listener of music. Digital formats were such a leap over analog media at the time. There was an art to holding your portable CD player (on edge, cradled with your palm facing upward) so that the CD did not constantly slip as you walked. It always amused me that my portable CD player was called a “Discman” instead of a “Walkman”, as if Sony knew that walking with one was impractical. They solved that a bit later with portable CD players that had bigger buffers… But a DAT Walkman presumably would not have had the problem at all. But I had neither the funds nor the knowledge of where one might acquire something like this. Technology back then often felt just out of reach.

In college I had a Japanese-American friend who came back to school from a summer in Japan. She had what looked like a little toy cellphone on her keychain. She showed it to me and I said “cute toy” and she responded “it’s not a toy!” She powered it up and showed me the screen. It even had a little trackball to control an impossibly small cursor. Naturally it did not work with networks in the US. But it left me feeling a bit stunned and wondering what I was missing not living in Japan. I think this was in 1999 or 2000.

[1] https://extinct-media-museum.blog.jp/archives/22934077.html

edit: it was probably more like 2002-2003 now that I think about it. It was probably more of a “joystick” than a “trackball.” I wonder if anyone on HN knows which one I’m talking about.

by raddan

Been there. The place is tiny, but very well curated, and packed floor to ceiling with interesting gadgets, some of which you are even allowed to touch. They also sometimes organize small flea markets, the one time I visited they had one for vintage headphones going on.

by pilaf

This reminds me of the episode of the old anime series Cowboy Bebop where the crew explore an abandoned museum in a buried city searching for a Betamax player: https://cowboybebop.fandom.com/wiki/Speak_Like_A_Child

by neuronexmachina

> All media other than paper and stone will become extinct

Somewhat tangential...

I once worked for the national archives. Unlike libraries, the archives typically have the only copy of a specific piece of data. So if the lose the data, it is lost forever. My mission was to figure out how to deal with information storage in a millennial perspective.

There are tons of really interesting ways to store data. I think my favorite was printing QR codes on microfilm and then storing the film in an abandoned coal mine on Svalbard. The first frames on each roll with come with source code and instructions on how to decode the data.

FWIW; my recommendation was 3-way replicated object storage, until more stable form of storage presents itself and becomes reasonable.

by perbu

Some other museums to visit while you’re in Tokyo:

JCII Camera Museum https://www.jcii-cameramuseum.jp/top-e/

Small Worlds Miniature Museum https://smallworlds.jp/en/

Button Museum https://button-museum.jp/en/

World Bags and Luggage Museum https://www.ace.jp/en/museum/

Meguro Parasitological Museum https://www.kiseichu.org/e-top

I learned about the Button Museum more than twenty-five years ago. I was taking a walk along the Sumida River and noticed two big buttons on a sign overlooking the river:

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.691592,139.7887136,2a,15y,24...

Haven’t visit the museum yet, though.

by tkgally

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Hacker News
```
   Upon payment of an admission fee, visitors are free to take photos, record video, and scan 3D images of the collection.
```
This is so refreshing as a mindset. Compared to some countries where they are used to ask you to pay an additional fee just to take personal pictures.
by greatgib
It seems like most of the collection is post-1960, leaving out many earlier types of media such as the ediphone and graphophone cylinders.
https://obsoletemedia.org/ediphone/
by ilamont
I think this nostalgia is useful for reminding us there are aesthetic forms beyond what Jony Ive et al happened to design and became the dominant form factor. The 2000s explosion of MP3 players had a lot of little ideas like the iRiver Clix had 'press the side of the device' as a navigation system
by firasd
Wow, a DAT Walkman [1]! I forgot that this existed, but I am remembering now that I heard about them in college and desperately wanted one. I was (and still am) an avid listener of music. Digital formats were such a leap over analog media at the time. There was an art to holding your portable CD player (on edge, cradled with your palm facing upward) so that the CD did not constantly slip as you walked. It always amused me that my portable CD player was called a “Discman” instead of a “Walkman”, as if Sony knew that walking with one was impractical. They solved that a bit later with portable CD players that had bigger buffers… But a DAT Walkman presumably would not have had the problem at all. But I had neither the funds nor the knowledge of where one might acquire something like this. Technology back then often felt just out of reach.
In college I had a Japanese-American friend who came back to school from a summer in Japan. She had what looked like a little toy cellphone on her keychain. She showed it to me and I said “cute toy” and she responded “it’s not a toy!” She powered it up and showed me the screen. It even had a little trackball to control an impossibly small cursor. Naturally it did not work with networks in the US. But it left me feeling a bit stunned and wondering what I was missing not living in Japan. I think this was in 1999 or 2000.
[1] https://extinct-media-museum.blog.jp/archives/22934077.html
edit: it was probably more like 2002-2003 now that I think about it. It was probably more of a “joystick” than a “trackball.” I wonder if anyone on HN knows which one I’m talking about.
by raddan
Been there. The place is tiny, but very well curated, and packed floor to ceiling with interesting gadgets, some of which you are even allowed to touch. They also sometimes organize small flea markets, the one time I visited they had one for vintage headphones going on.
by pilaf
This reminds me of the episode of the old anime series Cowboy Bebop where the crew explore an abandoned museum in a buried city searching for a Betamax player: https://cowboybebop.fandom.com/wiki/Speak_Like_A_Child
by neuronexmachina
> All media other than paper and stone will become extinct
Somewhat tangential...
I once worked for the national archives. Unlike libraries, the archives typically have the only copy of a specific piece of data. So if the lose the data, it is lost forever. My mission was to figure out how to deal with information storage in a millennial perspective.
There are tons of really interesting ways to store data. I think my favorite was printing QR codes on microfilm and then storing the film in an abandoned coal mine on Svalbard. The first frames on each roll with come with source code and instructions on how to decode the data.
FWIW; my recommendation was 3-way replicated object storage, until more stable form of storage presents itself and becomes reasonable.
by perbu
Some other museums to visit while you’re in Tokyo:
JCII Camera Museum https://www.jcii-cameramuseum.jp/top-e/
Small Worlds Miniature Museum https://smallworlds.jp/en/
Button Museum https://button-museum.jp/en/
World Bags and Luggage Museum https://www.ace.jp/en/museum/
Meguro Parasitological Museum https://www.kiseichu.org/e-top
I learned about the Button Museum more than twenty-five years ago. I was taking a walk along the Sumida River and noticed two big buttons on a sign overlooking the river:
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.691592,139.7887136,2a,15y,24...
Haven’t visit the museum yet, though.
by tkgally