The Extinct Media Museum Tokyo Preserves Vanishing Technology for Future Generations
I founded the Extinct Media Museum Tokyo based on the belief that all media except paper and stone will eventually disappear. Our private museum collects and displays thousands of obsolete items, from 8mm film cameras to early PDAs, allowing visitors to touch and examine them closely. We encourage guests to photograph the collection to ensure these artifacts are documented forever, while also offering a library of lost product catalogs for research.
All media other than paper and stone will become extinct.
- tkgally
Some other museums to visit while you’re in Tokyo:
JCII Camera Museum
https://www.jcii-cameramuseum.jp/top-e/
Small Worlds Miniature Museum
Button Museum
World Bags and Luggage 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.
- perbu
> 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.
- nicbou
I went and I loved it. The owner encourages you to pick things up and try them. I am glad I went.
- neuronexmachina
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
- pilaf
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.