TECHNICAL KNOCKOUTSan Jose Museum Scores Successby Toni Dabbs
The museum comprises four jam-packed theme galleries: Life Tech: The Human Machine - focusing on how technologies save lives and enhance human performance and on the social and ethical ramifications of their use. Innovations: Silicon Valley and Beyond - demonstrating some of today's most sophisticated systems. Communication: Global Connections - illustrating the global networks underlying our daily lives and broadening the ways in which we connect to each other. Exploration: New Frontiers - showcasing tools used to investigate this planet and others. In addition, there's a gallery for changing exhibits of experimental and state-of-the-art technology plus an IMAX dome theater.
Hundreds of such interactive exhibits are showcased in the $99 million, 132,000-square-foot, three-level facility located in what might be considered the capital of Silicon Valley — San Jose, California. The striking mango and azure colored building, designed with simple geometrical lines by renowned Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, occupies a prominent site on Plaza de Cesar Chavez in the city's downtown core.
Since opening on October 31, 1998, The Tech has seen some controversy concerning its connection with Silicon Valley corporations, which admittedly donated millions of dollars in cash and equipment to the facility. However, if most visitors perceive that The Tech is a promotional ploy for private industry, they don't seem to care. They're apparently too busy taking virtual rides in a bobsled simulator used to train Olympic competitors, making 3-D maps of their own heads, and doing other fun things. Contact The Tech Museum of Innovation courtesy of The Tech |
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TM
My schedule allowed just two hours to tour the new Tech Museum of Innovation. Two days would have been more appropriate.
The museum lets visitors get their hands on high tech equipment that they might otherwise never have a chance to go near. You can experiment with robotic manufacturing, control an underwater vehicle fitted with a video camera, steer a model rover across a simulated Martian landscape, perform "keyhole" surgery with a laparoscope, even design a roller coaster then take it for a virtual test drive.
Its custom-made exhibits, including the only clean room for microchip production on public display, are intended "to engage people of all ages and backgrounds in understanding how technology works and how it affects our daily lives," says Miguel Salinas, The Tech's manager of media and community relations.