Extinct Media Museum Tokyo

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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/

   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.

This sort of reminded me of my visit to https://www.cameramuseum.ch/en/themuseum/mission/ Camera museum in Vevey, Switzerland.

It is not very big and was difficult for me to follow as I cannot read French. Even with those language barriers on my end, it was fun way to see how photographic media evolved.

I have a single-sided 8-inch floppy disk somewhere

I think it held 160K

But also TRS-80 cassette tape which would be oldest computer medium I have

You would have to save things half a dozen times because most would not load later

It made me realize I could "save" dial-up computer terminal connections to cassette and play them back later (300 baud was very forgiving)

I'm currently in the process of emptying a basement and a garage. Stuff from my great-mother, great-aunt, uncle, parents, brothers and myself.

Plenty of different media (medium?): Pathe Baby, Super 8, dia, very old pictures on glass plates, countless floppies, etc.

Sadly "items you own own you" and there's no way I'm letting my kid having to sort, recycle, give as many items as I had to. We're talking, easily, 30 000 items from deceased people. Probably more.

Old pictures from cities (there's probably some interest in those). Old movies too.

Countless pictures from people I don't even know.

I know there's some stuff historians and museum would like.

But I only have one life: I can't take the time to send everything to enthusiasts, museums, etc. So I'm keeping some stuff (those in the best shape) but I'm basically sorting and filling cars and cars and trailers and going to the recycling center.

It's soul crushing.

P.S: and I wonder... Do I have an obligation to digitize some of this stuff so AIs can eventually be trained on it? (seen that they're trained on the entirety of the recorded world's knowledge) Or do I have an obligation to get rid of it so that AI do not get trained on it? Or neither?

Related this week:

Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025766

If you like this, the Dead Media Project's working notes are fascinating, if they're still out there (90s project, Bruce Sterling-adjacent). I was on the mailing list, way back when.

I went and I loved it. The owner encourages you to pick things up and try them. I am glad I went.

Techmoan has to visit this place

From the main page ……

What is the Extinct Media Museum ?

The Extinct Media Museum (Tokyo,Japan) is a private museum that collects and exhibits media and media equipment that have died out or are dying out in the process of evolution based on the belief that all media other than paper and stone will become extinct. ……..