squarehappy is Michael Huch is a cynical web developer and designer with more styles than content.

A Tech Museum of Innovation Adventure

posted by Mike on 01.12.2006 9:56 PM EST | 298 comments

On my last day off, my friends Bryan, Josh, my girlfriend, and I took advantage of the rare occasion that we all have a day off together and ventured to the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California. I was particularly excited to visit the museum at this time, because of two exhibits being shown at the time: video games and the internet. It's like they were exhibiting my life. Pictures really would've said a lot more on this one, so I apologize for the lack of them. Here's the ASCII version of our Tech Museum adventure.

After doing several bombing runs on the museum looking for parking, we locked on to an underground lot, and made a decent trek to the museum on foot. I walked up to the counter immediately inside the front doors, but it served some unknown purpose unrelated to ticket sales. It was then we learned that the video game exhibit had ended just a few days prior. Nonetheless, we were determined to get the most out of the rare event that is us leaving the house, and we also wanted to leave our own unique mark on the place, in a legal and non-financially bounding way. We acquired the tickets and then experienced our first of many technological innovations, the escalator. But seriously...

One of the very first exhibits we encountered was a robot arm that interacted with those wooden blocks with letters on them that children way too young to spell play with. When it wasn't arbitrarily rearranging the blocks inside its bullet-proof cage, it could spell whatever you input into the monitor next to it. Like so many robots I encounter, we decided this one had sentience and took pity on its menial, encased existence. We told the robot arm to spell "HELP ROBOT" and we were on our way.

Later we took a simulated bobsled ride, in which you got to sit in a bobsled that appearred as though it would provide some kind of force feedback and hydraulic lifts. It didn't, but I got to steer the bobsled via handles in the front that I imagine are the same used in real bobsleds. We chose the Jamaican team mon and took the silver. The graphics were on par with Race Drivin' or the first Virtua Fighter. All in all, it was a big disappointment that made me regret not running the bobsled off the track and into the non-existant spectators. I should get some good vibrations on the sled driving over their once life-filled bodies.

Still, the bobsled simulator beat the wheelchair race simulator, which featured similar graphics, and also took place on Mars. This Mars was sparse and barren, but colonized as evidenced by the rotating radar dish. Bryan left me in his space dust, but I blame my wheelchair and solar wind. Also, the riders didn't have spacesuits. I guess wheelchair users really can do anything they put their mind to. The roller coaster simulator was the worst of the three. One minor vibration every two seconds does not plunge me into the world of high-speed thrill rides. They should've combined it with the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake simulator.

There was another exhibit that taught basic computer logic using simple triggers and and/or operators. You could assign different buttons on a table to activate a seesaw, a cuckoo, and a train, giving them locomotive capabilities, deal with the pun. You could also attach Tinker Toys to those three things for whatever reason. I found a reason. I set up a button to trigger the seesaw, and attached tinker toys to the seesaw in such a way that each time the seesaw went down the button that triggered it would be pushed again. Credit to Bryan and Josh on engineering the perfect Tinker Toy construct. Like a lot of the exhibits that we manipulated in ways not orginally intended, we left the station soon after, but not before admiring the perpetual motion machine we'd created. Just add power.

And the most immature event, but perhaps the funniest in our museum adventure, was the internet arm wrestling station, part of internet exhibit going on to teach people of the amazing power and knowledge contained in the world wide network. The arm wrestling machine enabled you to match forearm might with someone from across the country. I was paired with a larger fellow in a museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania, who I could see and could see me via a webcam in the kiosk. After a hard fought battle, he eventually succumbed or just gave up. Nonetheless, I was victorious. I could see people smiling and laughing at the other end, but not for long. They watched as a certain finger crept into frame, right in front of the camera. Thanks to the power of the internet, I was able to flip off a museum in Pennsylvania. That's what I call being a sore winner. Josh, who was looking on, had tears in his eyes from absurdity of what had transpired. I admit that a simple finger caused me to giggle for a good part of the next hour. As usual, we made a hasty escape.

Between all of the above, riding a Segway for the first time, tracking people on a security camera, performing ominous Gregorian chants in an echo chamber, and a whole lot more, the Tech Museum of Innovation is an experience I'll not soon forget, and I'm great at forgetting things. While not as hands-on as the Exploratorium, you won't leave the place feeling like little more than a spectator. If you happen to live in Silicon Valley and read this site (~1,257,299,000:1) then take my advice: You'd be a fool not to experience The Tech, as it is affectionately known, at some point in your limited existence. Tell 'em Mike sent you. They'll probably throw you out.