My donation to the Museum of Curiosity

Goin' nuts with the label maker by Bryan Kennedy, on Flickr

No, unfortunately I haven't been asked to be on the popular Radio 4 radio show "The Museum of Curiosity". But just in case I ever am, I've already decided what I'd like to donate.

But first, a bit of background on the show. The Museum of Curiosity is a panel comedy show, but with a twist. Instead of funny people being funny, they get in funny people, and experts on all sorts of things (and sometimes those people are one and the same), and they have a bit of a chat with the show presenter about their life and work. And each of the guests then gets to donate something to the Museum.

In the show's own words:

"The idea of the show is to bring together the most interesting people we can find and ask them to submit one item each to fill the Museum's empty plinths"

The seventh season is being broadcast at the moment (you can catch up on the listen again part of the BBC Radio4 website), and over the seven seasons there have been such weird and wacky things donated as the alphabet, a pubic louse, silence, Father Christmas, nothing and Epping Forest.

So, dear producers of the Museum of Curiosity. If I were ever to be invited to make a donation to the Museum, here's what it'd be:

(drum roll please!)

A Telepathic Label Maker!

(Note, this is a label maker that makes telepathic labels, not a label maker that is telepathic.)

And as for my reason for donating it - well, the Museum has an awful lot of stuff in it already, with more being added to it all the time. And some of the things (like silence, or nothing) are the sort of things that are really hard to identify if you don't know what it is you're looking at. The label maker would allow the curator of the Museum to label everything*, and provide the casual visitor with all the information they'd need to understand the exhibits, and provide credit to the person who donated it in the first place.

As for the telepathic labels, well, that's me thinking ahead. Assuming that the Museum is around for a long, long time (like I'm sure the curator hopes it is), language is going to change, so a label written in present day English (or heaven forbid, jargon!) won't be very useful. A telepathic label will be able to change to address the person (or alien!) who is viewing it in their own preferred language. Plus, it'd be a big saving on translation services, and would draw a lot more visitors in. 

I await your call, Mr Curator!

__________

* I'm deliberately not using the word metadata here (in case it scares off the media types), though that's essentially what I'm talking about.