It was all pretty obvious stuff if you’re even casually into science. I think they have taken the “community outreach” so far as to really dumb down a lot of the content. There wasn’t anything there that I couldn’t just read in the Guardian and there wasn’t much in the way of physical experiences that enhanced the information.

The bookstore/shop had some cool stuff, but still fairly mainstream — not even quite as cool as The Discovery Store used to be back in the 90s.

It’s a little frustrating to go to a museum & find yourself interacting with screens a lot. That said, the best exhibit was the climate change projection graphs; the documentation on how to use it wasn’t stellar but it eventually became clear and - while this fully could just as easily be accessed via the web - having it in a museum space lends itself to a sort if captive audience. If anyone is paying attention to that content, to those projections, it’s powerful. But that said, it is still just a screen, which isn’t very attention grabbing in itself.

I also enjoyed the solar sail mockup. That space origami was very cool to see in real life after reading about it in Cixin Liu’s 3 Body Problem & some documentaries.

The interactive art wall was a cool idea. The timing on it wasn’t perfect, but I like the concept.

My friend & I found it politically slanted. Slanted in my direction but it still annoyed me because there were moments lacking in objectivity, sort of with a soft liberal arts slant that just isn’t what I expect of detached scientific objectivity of a tech museum/school. Obviously, one side of the political spectrum favors science more, in aggregate - lol - so I guess they are reaching out to their target audience? But if they were a little less heavy handed with nonobjective prosthelytizing, it might get more people from both sides invested in hearing the science. MIT should be a bastion of objectivity, and I found this hard political line unprofessional & offputting, even when I didn’t disagree with the content. It’s just kind of a slobby modern handling of data made to sensationalize it & emotionalize it, as though that’s the only way to get people invested. Feels like a cheap gimmick that degrades the detachment of science as a higher power beyond human trifles & the pettiness of competing philosophies. That didn’t irritate me terribly, but it made the experience less enjoyable for my spazzy conservative friend. 🤣 And I couldn’t really even disagree for once.

Anyway, those are the multiple reasons I don’t recommend the museum as a whole unless you just have money & time to burn.