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This article first appeared in Conservation News 71. Dangling on the webOn 17th September 1999, the British government announced that in ten years time analogue television will be switched off. If you did not know that your TV was 'analogue' now you do. It is clear, digital is the only future! Chris Smith has also announced that it will not happen unless 95% of the population is already on digital. Guess what? In 2008 all government services will be on the web and only there; from medical advice (put your cursor on the picture where it hurts?) to your income tax forms. You may have noticed that your bank is pushing hard its on-line services, in 2002 the pension book at the local Post Office will cease to operate. Pensions will only be paid into bank accounts. You will have access to the net and the shopping channels with your remote control and your television set. Not being connected to the web is going to be like living in an isolated house without telephone or car. One can live happily getting back to nature, but that sort of attitude will probably be outlawed. We will have to be resigned to Big Brother watching us, or take to the hills.You may wonder what this ranting has to do with conservation. If you think that the digital revolution is not going to affect conservation, think again! Some institutions are already using virtual restoration. It is quite easy from a picture of a damaged object to create a picture of the object as it was when first made and to show the succcssive layers of change it has sustained. At the moment it is used to allow curators to make informed decisions about to which level they want an object restored. The next step is to exhibit an object with all its warts, beside it a screen will allow the visitors to cloak its 3D image in its former glory. At the same time that they learn about the no-longer hidden damages caused by age and neglect, they will have the fun associated with the rise of 'interactives', so beloved by the museum gurus lio want us all to play on little screens. It will be wonderful! We will see the inside of boxes, the bottoms of vases and the skeletons of the stuffed tigers. We should rejoice, it is non-interventive restoration at its best. We will only stabilise the object and not get involved in sometimes questionable 'cosmetic' treatments. Of course, it may put a lot of us out of work, along with bank clerks, accountants, telephonists, petrol pump attendants, etc. What can we do, start another Luddite movement? The first one did not succeed. There are few chances for our socks to be ever again all handknitted. If you can't beat them, join them. A few years ago I wrote an article about the Internet (Conservation News 60, 1996). It is time to update. In reality, things have not changed that much. The web can still be frustrating; as it is becoming larger and larger, it is becoming more difficult to search (see the review on page 15 of the book 'Metadata'). What has improved is that most website designers have learnt that slow pretty logos are not an asset. The 24-hour museum (www.24hourmuseum.org.uk) is still in infancy, but it is growing fast and if conservators do not make a stand to exist on their museum sites they, are really, really going to vanish in their basement labs. Some museums are doing their conservators proud, but others have ignored their conservation departments when they stepped online. Who is responsible for totally overlooking the conservators when they built their sites? Should not conservators demonstrate to their website builders that they are an asset not only because they preserve the collections, but also because they do interesting work that the visitors to the web would be thrilled to see? If you need ideas, visit the Minneapolis Museum site www.artsmia.org/restoration-online or the Museum of Modern Art, New York www.moma.org/collection/conservation.
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