<div dir="ltr"><p class="gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">Dear colleagues,</p><p class="gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">There's a viral photo of visitors on their phones in the Louvre's Grande Galerie that's sparked the usual "phones are ruining museums" discourse. But I think it actually illustrates a fundamental design problem in how we've approached digital interpretation.</p><p class="gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">After two decades building digital technology products, I've come to believe we miscalculated the core problem. It was never about access to information - it was about attention as a finite resource.</p><p class="gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">I've written about this tension and what it means for how we think about visitor technology: <a class="gmail-underline" href="https://thormartinbaerug.com/2025/11/05/how-were-building-museum-technology-that-gets-out-of-the-way/">https://thormartinbaerug.com/2025/11/05/how-were-building-museum-technology-that-gets-out-of-the-way/</a></p><p class="gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">The argument centers on why audio-first approaches preserve visual attention in ways that screen-based interpretation cannot, and why the "technology that disappears" principle matters more than feature richness.</p><p class="gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">Would be interested in perspectives from colleagues working in collections with diverse audiences and interpretation needs.</p><p style="margin:0px;font-size:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-feature-settings:normal"><b>Sincerely / Med Venlig Hilsen</b><b></b></p><p style="margin:0px;font-size:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-feature-settings:normal;min-height:15px"><br></p><p style="margin:0px;font-size:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-feature-settings:normal">Thor Martin Baerug</p><p style="margin:0px;font-size:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:"Helvetica Neue";font-size-adjust:none;font-kerning:auto;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-feature-settings:normal"><a href="https://walkietalk.ie/">https://walkietalk.ie/</a></p><p class="gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></p></div>