Museums and "information society"

Between market culture and people´s assurance seeking

Prof. Dr. Gernot Wersig

Paper presented at ictop ´97 "Innovation in Media and organizational
Changes in Museums", Fachhochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin,
22.9.97

1. A radical position

The subject of the conference is "Innovation in media and

organizational changes in museums" - this implies a specific
relationship between the two components: Media are
changing and therefore museums have to change their
internal organization. Indeed, museums are conservative
institutions because

 main part of their job is conservation

 they were established as institutions some 150 years
ago and during that time conserved many of their
aims and functions
 they are concerned by definition with history, tradition
and looking back - and You cannot do that
professionally without loving it
 they therefore attracted very many conservatists as
museum personnel.

From this viewpoint the subject of the conference looks

innovative because it implies change for museums and in a
sense it is very innovative because it is more than many
museum professionals would admit to happen. But if one is
not socialized within the museum community and is
professionally obliged to look at developments in the future
of communication the formulation of the subject remains
conservative insofar as it implies

 that museums remain as museums as they always

referred to themselves, and if changes are necessary
they only would be organizational changes,
  that museums are not media, and
 that the changes which force museums to adopt
organizationally only are media innovations.

At least at the beginning of the conference I like to dare to

offer a radical different viewpoint in the following course of
argument:

1. We are facing a principal change of nearly everything -

this is what we call postmodernity.
2. The main force in changes to postmodernity at the
present time is communication - something once has
been called the "communicative revolution" and is now
indicated by the metaphor of "information society"
and "information age"
3. Museums are media which are of importance to
postmodernity and therefore they have to adapt to the
features of "information society" far more radical than
only organizational, but as

 a type of medium
 an institution in society
 a component of the media structures.

The ideas related to this course of argument are organized

as some sets of interrelated collections of ideas in order to
act as a kind of resource for the deliberations of the
different discussion groups of the conference.

2. The transition to postmodernity

Nearly all authors dealing with questions of the

transmission of modernity are of one general opinion: We
are living in an age of transition where the extent and
depth of tranisition is comparable to that from the middle
ages to renaissance. They of course are of different opinion
which kind of transmission it will be, e.g.

 to reflexive modernity (Beck 1993, Giddens)

 second modernity (Beck 1997)
  corrected modernity (Habermas 1985)
 postmodernity (Lyotard, Welsch).

Regardless whether the authors believe that the new age

will be a new approach to modernity or will form a new
non-modern era, they more or less agree that the main
reasons for the transmission are:

 the general change in the Western countries from a

society which is more or less based on industry to a
society based to a main degree on services: from
industrial production to service markets.
 the general change from tradition-oriented collectives
to self-organized individuals: from masses to
individuals
 the general change from work-space-centered
societies to leisure-oriented societies
 the general change from the distinction between
culture - as the culture of the educated elites - to
cultures on different levels (high brow, middle brow,
low brow) being selected by the people according to
the efforts they are willing to spend: from the
culture to multicultures (Eco)
 the general loss of belief in teleology - whether
religious (the other world), ideological (class-less
society), or hisotrical (Hegelianism, prograss): from
historicism to beyond history.

Since museums belong to the core institutions of modernity

(they are strongly related to the view of history and nation
of modernity), what would the turn to postmodernity (or
another rather different stage of modernity) in these terms
mean for museums?

 Museums are not any more institutions being

alimented as one of the institutions of organized
industrial society but become part of the service-
orientation which is less organized by society but be
transferred more to the self-organization structures.
 There are less secured functions of institutions on
behalf of organized masses but there are very many
 individuals which have a lot of options to do what they
want to do.
 The number of options for the ordinary people is still
increasing, therefore very many institutions are
competing for the budgets of the individuals - time
budgets, monetary budgets, motivational budgets,
mobility budgets.
 Culture is becoming more and more pluralistic -
museums as institutions of "the one" (elitistic) culture
have to face the situtation of pluralism which develops
differently in each area.
 Museums have been to some extent children of
teleology - the look back into history is worthwile
because ot the built-in mechanism of progress. The
method of looking back into history now has to follow
other directions: If there is no valid model of a relation
between past and future what then could be learned
by looking back? History changes ist function in
postmodernity.

It should be rather simple to conclude from that: If

museums are to survive in these times of change, they
have to change themseles considerably. But are there still
important functions for Museums, is it worthwile to think
about their survival?

3. Problems of transition to postmodernity

The changes are taking place quite rapidly and very many
people seem not to be prepared very much for the amounts
of diversity and velocity of changes. An analysis of the main
dimensions of postmodernity (Wersig 1998) identified a set
of problems that individuals are facing and for which
individuals are looking for help. Since they have very many
options they of course will opt for those institutions which
offer them the help they need in these times of change

 efficiently
 in a communicative and pleasureful way
 non-educational, non-authoritative, non obligatory.
Let us have a look at the problems in order to check
whether museums in principle will be of interest as helping
and guiding institutions in the transition to postmodernity:

1. Modernity promised consistencies, postmodernity is

characterized by the existence of contradictions,
paradoxies, antagonisms which would not be solved
but with which people have to live.

The only approach so far to deal with contradictions

without solving them is pragmatism. People will have
to learn about pragmatism, examples of pragmatism,
how to be pragmatic and how to deal with
consequences of pragmatics, the remaining existence
of contradictions.

2. Modernity promised security, postmodernity is

characterized by increased insecurity and uncertainty.
The concept of rational organization of security in all
respects and all over the world - unversalistic - is
reduced in its applicability. We realize that we cannot
put everything in order.

We have to reinvent the ideas of the renaissance as

Toulmin points out - orality, locality, time dependency,
contextuality, This, in fact, will lead to a new
postmodern renaissance of humanism and
scepticism - back to Montaigne via Marquard.

3. One very important factor of postmodernity was

realized in Berlin skin-deep: the dwindling of
boundaries. Modernity produced order by
establishing boundaries, now they are dwindling - not
only political and regional borders, but also boundaries
between social segments, cognitive structures, etc.
Still remaining borders in the futures will be overcome,
crossed, erased, newly defined, made permeable, or
even virtual. We have to define new relations to
boundaries, borders etc. This requires a new
paradigm of actors (Wersig 1993), e.g.

o a new understanding of humans

 o a new direction in the leading paradigm of the
late phase of modernity - systems theory which
so far concentrated an boundaries between
systems and environments
o explorations of new aspects of self-organization
between and not within systems.

1. The world is becoming more complex: the more we

know the less we understand, complexity produces
uncertainty, risks, depression, overstrain.

People need to have new instruments, tools, methods,

programmes at hand to reduce and manage the new
complexities. This will require re-analyzing all our
experiences in order to detect and evaluate structures
of chaos-management, the management of complex
patterns, the re-design of non-modern and non-
rational instruments of complexity reduction
(Wersig 1997a).

2. Differences which, so far, have been well known and

were very helpful are now diminishing or are becoming
levelled by individualization, unification,
commercialization, globalization. The result is a
considerable lack of orientational capacities of the
people.

What badly is needed are all kinds of aids for

orientation in pluralistic, levelled environments. This
means to learn how to make an indvidually senseful
difference which still is tolerant against the other
(Bauman 1995).

3. Within postmodernity a new balance has to be found

between individuals and collectives. This means we
have to develop new ways of dealing with changing
value systems, pluralism, ethics.
4. The concept of "reality" is changing (some authors
even think it is leaving us). Reality had been defined
by social ordering strcutures, by the social collectives,
by our local real world experiences. In particular, the
media and the diminishing ordering structures force us
 to give up the universalistic idea of one reality (Wersig
1997b), but to deal with very many realities which
have different relations to us. A pluralism of
realities requires postmodern selves which at the
same time are pluralistic (patchwork identities) and
self-identical. The self will become the major
component that holds together the individual in a very
fragmented, chaotic, un- and (at the same time)
overorganized world.
5. The future has become open (no teleology) and it
has become limited (as a only rather short period
which the individual can overlook) at the same time.
We have lost the belief that everything will end well,
but we have to realize that future becomes an open
space for action.
We have to develop methods of future design: By
life-stylization, by provisional and temporary
programs, small and realistic utopias.

People are beginning to realize that the world changes into

this direction and that many of them urgently require help.
But as other people are concerned as possible sources for
help, so far there are not too many postmodernists and the
small portion is not distributed even throughout society.
Therefore the request for help has to be directed against
institutions. But again very few institutions have relevant
experiences out of which postmodernist guidance could be
extracted. But museums: They always had to deal with
reality not as a totality but as reflectd through objects of
very different origin and meaning. Museums always were
concerned with

 contradictions not to be solved by rational theory

 the parallelity of rational and non-rational features of
the world
 overcoming borders between cultures, times, styles
 complexities of different kind
 necessity to develop orientational aids
 pluralities of values and realities.
Although or even because of they are concerned with
concrete history they have an enormous potential to look at
history as a set of histories which toghether could be used
as a simulation of postmodernism from which helpful
insights could be extracted. And museums - as children of
the "Aufklärung" - could do this by preserving as much
rationality as is possible, and therefore they are much more
able to continue these modern traditions in the extent that
is possible. My thesis therefore is:

There is hardly any institution as able as are museums to

prepare for postmodernity because museums are able to
simulate postmodernity as rational as possible within the
histories they are dealing with if they dare to look at them
as pluralisms.

Of course, one has to admit, that this role of museums

would provide a rather new framework for museums

 to look at history from the viewpoint of an open future

 to present culture not in order to present this culture
(as uncontradictory as possible) but as a diversity in
which the individuals can mirror and detect
themselves.

4. The features of "information society"

People need help and museums are a prominent institution

which has the potntial to help. But many individual do not
realize the need for help but rather prefer to overcome
uncertainties and insecurities by looking for escapes,
distructions, entertainments. Under these conditions only
very sufficient services would be able to offer efficient help
services - and sufficient would mean to offer services on a
contradictory level

 The services have to use the means and modi of

experession and attraction of the times - the people
usually are people of their times and they are
accustomed to the approaches that are the
 approaches of their times - efficient media have to be
media on top of their times.
 The services have to use approaches that transcend
the means and modi of the recent phase of modernity-
postmodernity-transition, since they are obliged to
open new ways of reflection on the self, the world, and
reality.

This indicates on one hand, strengthens on the other hand

the observation that in the recent phase of modernity-
postmodernity-transmission the main factor is
communication - and if one looks at it as a communication
scientist - it already had been for some time. Within the
web of factors affecting the change from modernity to
postmodernity "communication", "information" and "media"
during the last 150 years became more and more
important.

 Newspapers were used in the fight for democracy and

the core concept was "information" as a weapon: the
publication of information and meaning on one hand,
the censorship of information and meaning on the
other hand.
 At the same time they were used to organize the
growing mass markets by advertising.
 Interactive telecommunication from the very
beginning was looked at as a public service to be
controlled completely for outer and inner security
reasons by government which for a long time was an
autocratic government.
 Broadcasting - after a short period in which it was
looked at as dangerous and therefore had to be
controlled by government - then rather soon became
more of an entertainment medium.

After a period in which all media were used for control of

society by the governing powers of state and party (which
in one part of the country in principle remained with similar
structures up to 1989), in West Germany a specific media
system developed which is not too unsimilar to most od the
modern industrialized Western-style countries:
  The press as a privately owned medium for
information and meaning
 Television as a medium for information,
entertainment, and culture
 Interactive telecommunication remained as a public
service controlled by government (like the postal
services).

These two or three phases of a beginning information

society (Wersig 1996a, b) might be characterized by the
concept of "journalism" on one hand "state control" on the
other hand. Since society at that time (until the seventies
of our century) was a "mass society" and media channels
were restricted in number, media were used to establish a
"mass public". This changed at least with the following
technology and society expansions:

 the expansion of the markets - since more and more

aspects of veryday life become market-driven,
market-communication expanded: Advertising
everywhere
 the expansion of media channels - as more channels
(in particular in broadcasting) became technically
possible, entertainment expanded, since there was no
respective expansion in information
 the expansion of individualism/pluralism and
respective communication media - the distribution of
telephone sets enabled increased individualism, the
change of the media from mass media to target media
(e.g. in magazines) indicated increased pluralism.

The developments were supported by new technologies and

therefore new possibilities of communication and
information

 at the hand of people: copiers, personal computers,

digital entertainment and household electronics
 as intermitting media on digital basis: digital
interactive networks for multimedia messages, digital
distributive networks (digital broadcasting).
Within the general framework of shaping postmodernity the
structure and function of information, communication, and
media changed and became the main factor of change: the
change became for a time a change in communication (a
"communicative revolution" (Wersig 1985), since the world
of communication changes rapidly within 20 years). The
resulting new understanding of our world very often is
called "information society" - a society which is the
industrialized modern society in its transition into
postmodern society where the communication media are
the most important actors of change (Wersig 1997c).
Several impacts may be distinguished:

1. We are tending towards a situation in which nearly

everything could be communicated electronically from
any place to any place: universal electronic
communication
2. This communication requires the transformation of
that that has to be transported into representations
which - to some extent - could be looked at as being
immaterial so that they can be digitalized and
modulated onto electromagenetic waves:
immaterialization
3. By that the different modes of communication - sound,
characters, pictures - and the different genres of
communication - information, education,
entertainment, persuasion - are equalized into the
computer sience interpretation of "information" - the
Shannon formula which only recognizes separate
characters and no contents of the messages.
Everything becomes "information" but at the same
time everything becomes meaningless (since
"meaning" is no senseful concept in this theory). This
is perhaps what Baudrillard calls "simulacra":
Meaningless information everywhere.
4. Communication media and therefore formal
communication processes are becoming global,
regardless of the different cultures which in a human
sense communication only make useful -
communication for everybody in the world would be a
communication with no human sense.
5. Communication media and therefore formal
communication processes are becoming
contemporaneous - because of electronic channels
and intelligent machinery that operates
communication channels and media.
6. With globalization and contemporaneization of
electronic communication and integrated
computerization - both together usually called
informatization - communication becomes virtual in
senses of time and space - by communication, rather
regardless where and when we do it, we can perform
operations everywhere and at optional times in the
future.
7. One of the dimensions on which modernity developed
and was very successful is the rising dominance of the
market principle. Whereas in the beginning of the
information society the market principle was somehow
channelled (e.g. in public broadcasting, telephony,
postal services) the recent stage of information society
is turning into a stage of commercialization, in
which nearly everything that is communicated, every
communication process is looked at as a commodity.
8. This relates to the situation in which the state to some
extent retreats form ist former responsibilities in
communication and information by privatization and
deregulation of public communication authorities.
9. Another side of the dominance of the market principle
and deregulation is: Markets require communication -
the more areas of life are governed by the market
principle the more market communication is
necessary. This leads to the situation where nearly all
communication processes possibly at least to some
extent are market commuication.
10. The different developments culminate in an
increasing tendency that the so far different media
become unified into one ubiquitarian medium - a
broadband digital network on which all different
services could be organized (ideally under one
surface), which then are integrated organizationally
and contentually with the transport-oriented media
which still continue to exist (press, cinema, events). A
 new definition of medium will develop which so far is
not envisaged.
11. Related to theses developments is the already
existing loss of differentiation of communication
genres: the ...tainment family, like infotainment,
edutainment, advertainment and it are the growing
mixtures of information, adventure, activity, gossip,
chat in electronic games and internet surfing.
12. Behind that or influenced by that or both is the
advent of a new very pale concept - people do things
because they "are interested". This is not - as interest
in former times meant - hard capitalism or class
struggle, and it is not individual empathy or sympathy,
not something where the self is related to something
important, including a kind of commitment - in fact, in
most cases it is a rather unserious, unclear, undefined,
non-obligatory liking of something which relevance is
still unsettled (and everything being related to that
"in-terest" already becomes "information").

5. Museums as media in "information society"

The recent stage of information society is on one hand

forced by technology and market drives but on the other
hand an outcome ot the problems people have with
postmodernity - even if they perhaps do not know about
the problems listed before they feel that there are problems
and that they do not have the methods and tools to deal
with them - therefore they escape into non-obligatory
interests, surfing, entertainment. Since they have been
accustomed to modern media they are now escaping into
postmodern media, but there is a serious problem: Media
are on one hand an important part of the culture in order to
be used like other cultural instruments: self-sufficient, self-
reliant, integral parts of our life worlds. But even the media
of the latest stage of modernity - television, computers,
copiers - have not been around long enough to become
self-evident, integral parts of culture, We still have no
cultural norms on which we all agree concerning these
media and we have less than that concerning the new
media of postmodernity. The cultural development always
is a little bit behaind societal development, because culture
needs some time. Therefore the problem is, that in the
stage of "information society" we have no "information
culture" but still to some extent a "mass culture in
transition". Therefore the escapism into postmodern media
is at least riskful since we still need some time to integrate
these media at least into the surfaces of our communication
cultures. Therefore the traditional media which still
continue to exist are of importance because they

 offer some stability in the chaos of changes all around

 continue some basic modes of communication which
are of cultural importance.

Museums not only belong to this set of "old" media but they
form a very important type of medium because

1. they basically remain non-electronic

2. they basically remain materialistic and object-
oriented
3. the objects, they concentrate on, require to extract
the meaning out of them and to design it for efficient
communication, therefore they are bound to offer
meaningful communication (although this is not the
philosophy of all museum people, in particular in arts)
4. basically remain local (they stand where they are)
5. their communication modes - although it is to some
extent synoptic - alwaxs requires sequential
processing (in time and not contemporaneous)
6. and they always remain in their very core real and
non-virtual (or more precise: they form a kind of
virutal reality that is basically obliged and directed to
real reality, they always try to be as near to real
reality as possible - by originals, authenticity).

This indicates that museums - due to their medial

constitution: local, materialistic, in space and in time - are
a very important mode of communication, reminding the
people of the importance of reality in the sense of objects,
time and space in contrast to the new dimensions of
virtuality.

6. Museums as institutions in "information society"

"Information society" on one hand is defined by a new

approach to information, communication and media. Its
advent makes it necessary to look at everything we are
used to so far from the viewpoint of communication and
therefore we re-discover that museums not only are
institutions with some educational and cultural relevance
but that they are media and that they are media which are
of growing importance in our time, because

 they are a rather unique medium from their formal

characteristics (in space and time, real objects) - in
fact, a kind of countermedium against postmodern
media
 a very important medium in their constituent
characteristics (histories with all diversities,
differences, contradicitions and a nevertheless rational
tradition) - a rather good model of several
characteristics of postmodernity or a rather good
simulation.

This seems to make an extremely intersting and important

combination: In a time where simulation, virtualization,
immaterialization seem to become dominant for good
reasons, museums offer a heavy real world mode of
communication which at the same time could be used as a
simulation of features of the future (if museum people and
visitors would be willing to). This could become very
important, because the future of postmodern reality will -
when it comes - be as realistic as every reality has been
and therefore simulations with very much reality-remains
are more important than all the simlulations which are
nothing else than imagination, images and immateriality.

Museums could be of extreme importance in the very

difficult process of moving from modernity into
postmodernity under conditions of the information age - but
only if they confirm to some basic conditions
  they have to understand themselves as media, as
institutions offering communication services of a
specific kind and constitution
 they have to become an integral part of the
information society which - as was indicated - changes
in particular its communication institutions/media
considerably.

This means: To be an important medium within society it is

not sufficient to feel to be important or only to have the
potential of importance but it requires to make a respective
impact in that society and in order to do so, the medium
has to become an integral part of that society, it has to join
the others. The importance of the countermedium museum
only can make an impact if it works from the inside of the
system.

In Germany it may look like that due to state indebtedness

for some twenty years and rising welfare costs the state
budgets for culture are decreasing and therefore more
pressure is enacted on museums to increase market
oriented activities in order to increase the proportion of
earned money. But the shortage of public budgets is only
the surface phenomenon - behind that the basic features of
information society play an important role:

1. Developing an understanding of culture and cultural

activities which is as well market-oriented as it is
publicly responsible. The European tradition that
cultural institutions are looked at as being necessary
for society and therefore need a specifi guarante and
security from the side of the state is not any longer be
interpreted as a responsibility of the state authorities
to completely finance the institutions but now is
complemented by the idea that cultural offers at least
to some extent have to be organized according to
market principles: They could be looked at as
products, be sold for prices that have to compete with
prices of competing products and public support could
be oriented not only at cultural values but market
 success as well. This is increasingly requested from
museums as well.
2. This is related to a changing view on culture and the
role of the state: Culture is increasingly viewed as
something that does not has to be organized and
guaranteed by state authorities but is something that
is as well a value that has to be preserved as much by
the authorities as it is growing from the grassroots of
the people. Culture has to be developed and accepted
by the people and this requires that the cultural
producers compete for time and many budgets of the
people - against alle other leisure service operators.
This implies that museums have to adopt all the new
terminologies, techniques, philosophies of markets,
maerketing, competition, leisure attractiveness. They
have to consider their markets, target groups, product
developments.
3. If they join markets they have to join market
communication, but they are in the tricky situation (as
are most cultural competitors) that market
communication in their cases has several different
features:

o Their products have to communicated to the

markets by public relations, advertising, product
placement, oral propagation and the like.
o As all other media they are market
communication media for other products - they
will be used as media to avertise and propagate
other products and organizations - sponsoring is
one of the major activites in this direction.
o Since they are cultural institutions and of public
importance they have to develop their markets
for culturally based support (donor markets are
becoming a very interesting phenomenon) -
fundraising is one of the major activites in this
direction.
o If they are successful to establish themselves as
cultural brands the mechanisms of market
communication permit and (to some extent
already require) the derivation of secondary
 products/communication media in order to be
visible on the market (and earn money from this
situation) - merchandising.

7. Museums as parts of new media structures

Although the importance of museums as media in the

information age is to some extent based on their non-
postmodern characteristics they only can be successful - in
particular to those fractions of the people which most
urgently need their helping potentials - if they become a
part of the newly developing media structures:

1. Within the ubiquitarian medium a communication actor

- which in former times was as well called a medium
(like a specific newspaper or a magazine) - will
become visible if he is present through the different
technologies for production and distribution. This will
require at least two types of action:

o Making full use of the new media by developing

strategies of virtual outreach and of virtual
duplication(e.g. being present in the internet and
CD-ROM) (Wersig 1997c)
o Joining other media types throughout the media
world, e.g. a museum channel in digital
television, accompanied by a museum journal, a
museum information system, electronic museum
communication products (like newsgroups,
teleconferences with curators, up to
teleguidance).

1. With all the new and competing media and possibilities

the people are unavoidably becoming more
demanding: they do not want to look at objects about
which they do not know very much and they do not
want to have the impression that they are taught
something they did not ask for - they want to decide
themselves, they want to have fun and pleasure, they
want to learn something easily when they like to, they
like to be animated and guided if they feel they need
it, they like to be active, make full use of all theirs
 senses, do things socially. They are becoming self-
confident opters for choices which are used to action
and interaction, to pleasure, fun and sensuality, to
mixtures of genres and multimediality. Museums have
to take care of these demands and have to adapt their
presentation techniques and approaches to the level of
expections of the people: to find the specific
combinations of objects, explanatory information, old
and new media, entertainment and game, education,
outreach materialis ... museotainment would be an
appropriate metaphor.
2. The new metaphor "I am interested in" is a
consequence of on one hand growing individualization
and on the other hand decreasing universal
prescriptions. People do not know any more what in
general and for them in particular is important,
necessary, non to be missed. Museums have to react
to that in at least two different directions:

o They have to accept these vague, individual

interests as existing. If they do not, they
eventually will not be of interest to the
information age people and will have no
opportunity to provide their services to them.
This may be difficult to museums because they
have to react to very - in their view - trivial,
actual and rapidly changing interests which relate
to all kinds of fashions, tendencies, trends. Up to
now, an exhibition lasting unchanged for 15 years
still was agreed by the museum professionals, in
the future one year without any new idea would
be a rather long time.
o On the other hand individualism and de-
universalization means that general standards
and canons do not exist any more - what is
culturally valuable, necessary, important,
indispensable. Museums are a very important
institution, because part of their work is to value
things, objects, developments - they already do it
in their exhibitions and therefore it is very
important to get the people in the exhibitions to
 get an idea of valuating. But they should expand
these activities together with other relevant
institutions - other museums, academies,
universitities, intellectual circles - to work on
general pluralistic (instead of unversalistic)
canonical proposals and present them by the
medium of exhibition for argument and
discussion.

To resume: In a phase of transition from modernity to

postmodernity a lot of people and individuals are insecured
and are looking for individual assurance - assurance of their
selves and their position in society and the increasing
pluralisms. Museums could be a very important instance to
help these people finding some assurance because they can
simulate many features of ways on which in postmodernity
assurance could be found - if they look at history as a
collection of histories in which nearly all phenomena which
characterize postmodernity and which will be used to deal
with postmodernity already have been existent. And in
simulating postmodernity they can preserve as much
rationality as is possible under postmodern conditions. In
this sense museums have an enormous potential for
support and help.

To offer this potential successfully to people who most

urgently are in need of it, they have to join the structures
of the present stage of postmodernity, information society -
they have to join the markets, join the new media, join the
life worlds of the people (become a part within it, e.g. by
reaching out). They have to accept people as they are
(lazy, pleasure-oriented, unauthoritative, interested in very
many other items than culture, non interested to become
educated) and they have to accept society as it is (market
structures, commercialization, privatization, liberalization).

This sounds very contradictory and perhaps requires from

museums making the splits - but this is postmodernity and
if my thesis is right, museums not only have to try because
it is so important for many people that they try but
museums have the potential to achieve that combination of
insisting on a non-postmodern communication mode by
making use of very many of the postmodern
communication opportunities and media. This could be
possible but I have to admit that perhaps the museums - in
particular in Germany - do have the potential but not the
respective personnel. Perhaps this conference can push
museums, museum people and educational programmes a
little bit more into that direction.

References:

Bauman, Z. (1995): Postmoderne Ethik. Hamburg

Beck, U. (1993): Die Erfindung des Politischen. Frankfurt a.M

Beck, U. (1997) (Hrsg.): Kinder der Freiheit. Frankfurt a.M.

Eco, U. (1984): Apokalyptiker und Integrierte. Frankfurt a.M.

Giddens, A. (1995): Konsequenzen der Moderne. Frankfurt a.M.

Habermas, J. (1985):Der phhilosophische Diskurs der Moderne.

Frankfurt a.M.

Lyotard. J.-F. (1986): Das postmoderne Wissen. Graz-Wien

Marquard, O. (1986): Apologie des Zufälligen. Stuttgart

Marquard, O. (1994): Skepsis und Zustimmung. Suttgart

Montaigne, M. de: die Essais

Toulmin, S. (1991): Kosmopolis – Die unerkannten Aufgaben der

Moderne. Frankfurt a.M.

Wersig, G. (1985): Die kommunikative Revolution. Opladen

Wersig, G. (1993): Fokus Mensch - Bezugspunkte postmoderner

Wissenschaft: Wissen, Kommunikation, Kultur. Frankfurt etc.
Wersig, G. (1996a): Current state and propects in Germany- The
shaping of an information society.in: KOLISS DL ´96 Proceedings of
the International Conference on Digital Libraries and Information
Services for the 21st Century, September 10-13, 1996 Seoul - Seoul,
Korea: The Korean Library and Information Science Society 1996, S.
156-167 (see)

Wersig, G. (1996b): Die Komplexität der Informationsgesellschaft.

Konstanz

Wersig, G. (1997a): Komplexität und Reduktion. In: P. Koch, S.

Krämer (Hrsg.): Schrift, Medien, Kognition. Tübingen , S. 205-222

Wersig, G. (1997b): Medien, Wirklichkeiten und Virtualisierung. In:

G. Bentele, M. Haller (Hrsg.): Aktuelle Entstehung von Öffentlichkeit.
Konstanz, S. 529-538

Wersig, G. (1997c): Der Weg in die Informationsgesellschaft. In: M.

Buder et.al. (Hrsg.): Grundlagen der praktischen Information und
Dokumentation. 4. Aufl. München etc., S. 974-999

Wersig, G. (1997d): Museums for Far Away Publics: Frameworks for a

new Situation. In: P. Schuck-Wersig (Hrsg.) Museumsbesuch im
Multimedia-Zeitalter: Wie werden die neuen Medien die Optionen der
Museen verändern. Proceedings des internationalen Workshop vom
22.-23.5.1997 im Institut für Museumskunde, Berlin, Projekt
"Außenrepräsentanz von Museen", gefördert durch die Volkswagen-
Stiftung. Berlin (erscheint 1998)

Wersig, G. (1998): Individualisierung und Postmoderne (Theorie und

Methodik der Informationswissenschaft II) Skript einer Vorlesung im
Fach Informationswissenschaft. Miteinander verbundene Beiträge des
WS 1996/97 und 1997/98. September 1997

Acesso em: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~pwersig/444.html

Disponível em: 12 de maio de 2015