I saw this post from Vitalik come out today comparing two “Museums of the Future”, one in Tokyo and one in Dubai and how different they were. I was near the Miraikan museum in Tokyo, so I went ahead and visited. This is a response to his post, so if you haven't go ahead and read that first. I've been to the Miraikan several times as a kid, so it was an enjoyable throwback.
Firstly, I want to suggest that the philosophy of the Miraikan is fundamentally different from the Dubai museum. I've never been to the museum in Dubai, but from what Vitalik writes, it sounds like they got some curators with some flavor of Kurzweilian worldview to make a museum showcasing that vision.
Miraikan, on the other hand, is not trying to do that. When I visited, the first thing that struck me was how many kids I saw everywhere, I haven't seen so many Japanese kids in one place since I went to a local theme park. It was fun watching them engrossed in robot demos, or in the multitude of interactive gamelike displays. There were displays making scientific concepts like the internet and quantum computing easier to understand (which adults can appreciate too), but I found most interesting the large area called the "Park of Aging" with probably 12 gamelike displays with 80 minutes worth of demos designed to help people understand what seniors go through as they get older, from a video game that simulates the blurry vision that goes along with aging, to weighted boots that simulates the difficulty walking.
I know that to some people reading this, it would seem preposterous to put children, through this, but in a country which is aging as rapidly as Japan, being able to empathize with and be compassionate towards your elders is a vital skill in maintaining social harmony, which is crucial towards building a utopia. Lack of social cohesion and harmony is a sure path towards the dystopian world that most science fiction explores so thoroughly. They even have a display in a separate area exploring the subjective experience of life, one explicitly about empathy.
It gives me the sense that the museum administrators feel it is their mission to educate the next generation in cutting edge science and technology, but also evoke a sense of responsibility to live well as a member of humanity to create a better world. They're not trying to impress you with lifelike androids and other futuristic tech.
To me the message wasn't that we should do this by consuming less thereby reducing our harmful impact. I perceived it as instilling a sense of humility. We are individuals living on this planet together with billions of others. Our individual wellbeing is linked to the wellbeing of everyone else. So we should do our best to be helpful to others and the planet in what ways we can.
