A long blog post by Seth Purcell argues that museums are putting too much emphasis on screens and not enough on the physical exhibits that make them special in the first place.
The article begins with a childhood memory of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, where the author recalls hands-on experiences like moving sand, watching patterns emerge and exploring a model heart. That memory is the standard against which the current museum visit is judged. When the author returned with his young son, he found a very different balance of experiences.
The central complaint is that many of the museum’s most prominent attractions now look and feel like touchscreen games. The post says that what is marketed as “design your own rocket” is really a polished but shallow digital interaction. Screens were, in the author’s view, placed at the centre of multiple exhibits, while physical devices were pushed to the margins. The result, he argues, is a museum that feels less like a place to discover how the world works and more like an extended tablet app.
The post is vivid, but it is also explicitly subjective. Its value as news lies in the larger debate it reflects: whether museums are using digital interfaces as a substitute for real-world interaction. The author’s answer is no. He argues that museums should let visitors experience the real thing, because genuine materials and physical forces do something a screen cannot.
The essay also raises a maintenance question. The author says several physical exhibits were in bad repair, with some not working and others seeming poorly designed. That suggests the museum may not simply be choosing screens for novelty; it may also be struggling to keep older mechanical exhibits functioning. The piece does not include a response from the Franklin Institute, so a news report should avoid presenting those complaints as established institutional fact.
Still, the article is useful because it crystallises a tension many museums face. Digital tools can increase accessibility and interactivity, but they can also flatten the experience if they replace rather than supplement hands-on learning. The author’s strongest argument is that museums succeed when they let visitors use their own senses and bodies, not just their fingertips on glass.
The piece is written with the force of personal disappointment, but the underlying question is widely relevant to education, exhibit design and children’s attention. If a museum’s best moments can be replicated on an iPad, the author argues, it may have lost the point of being a museum at all.
What the essay captures best is the emotional expectation people bring to museums: the sense that a visit should feel unlike a day on a tablet or phone. Whether the Franklin Institute can answer that criticism is an open question, but the piece makes clear that visitors still care deeply about tactile, physical discovery when museums get it right.
The essay does not prove a universal trend, but it does show how strongly some visitors react when that balance shifts. A museum can survive criticism of a few exhibits, yet it risks losing something more important if its core experience feels interchangeable with the content of a phone. That is the deeper warning in the post.
