In his essay "The Virtual Past: Media and History" Mike Wallace discussed virtual museums. In this discussion he mentioned different approaches to taking museums in the virtual world. One approach is to set up websites to re-create the physical layout and all around setting of a museum. Another approach is to design "virtual exhibits." Although these techniques are linked with actual artifacts in museums, the world wide web creates "artificial" museums only found in cyberspace.The future of virtual reality museums will use helmet and body sensors, giving the illusion of being in a three dimensional space while interacting with computerized characters.
Here are some examples different virtual museums:
Thinking about the possibilities available to virtual museums, libraries and archives gives me the chills. Just think about how it could feel to walk through some of the archives and libraries of the future. Unbelievable architecture, an incredible array of exhibits, books, and collections, all at your virtual fingertips. For me the virtual part about this is not as contentious as it is for some of you, when it comes right down to it, we are all just a collection of electrical impulses traveling between receptors so essentially, the virtual is truly no less real than the "real!" Ultimately all those "real" collections we have are no different, they are just an organized group of electrons that our brains interpret as an archival collection of data that we find important.
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