Galway Science & Technology Festival, Part 2: ‘The Future was Yesterday’ at the Computer Museum

The largest crowd ever to visit the Computer & Communications Museum at the University of Galway occurred on the last day of the Galway Science and Technology Festival, and represented an appropriate finale to a 2 week programme with the theme of ‘Then, Today & Tomorrow’.
Under the ‘The Future was Yesterday’ banner, we showcased decades-old equipment & processes that are considered the latest cutting edge technologies such as robots, AI, 3D, Virtual Reality, online learning & gaming.
These included:
-19th century global communications (Morse Code) system in action that represented the birth of the ‘Global Village’
-sensor-based robot (inspired by R2-D2 of Star Wars!) which took part in Galway city’s 1984 St. Patrick’s Day Parade
-1970s AI-based tabletop computer chess set (inspired by a 1969 episode of Star Trek)
-1990s Virtual Reality headset
-1990s Flight Simulator
-1989 Immersive Technology Game glove
-1950s-1970s 3D image devices and 3D magazines
-1982 ‘remote working’ computing device
-1960s children’s Science Fiction device that inspired the mobile telephone
-an exact replica (made by Neal White & Tina O’Connell for the 2013 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts) of the first telecommunication satellite known as Telstar which in 1962 pioneered live global television & which is stilling orbiting the Earth!

Visitors also got to see probably Ireland’s oldest computer (from 1965 & on loan from Michael Jordan); how school-going teenagers in Galway during the early-mid 1980s (before invention of the World Wide Web) used what we now refer to as ‘cloud computing’, ‘online dating’ & ‘social media’; a robot (2016) called Mario that acted as a companion to people with dementia (from Prof Dympna Casey of UoG's School of Nursing & Midwifery).

Insight’s Conference Room was transformed into a Reading Room for 1950s/1960s children’s popular Marvel, DC & Eagle comics in which the stories of today & tomorrow were told yesterday (on AI, robotics, benefits & darkside of technology, space travel, oceanic pollution, environmental damage).
There was also on show the latest technology, used as part of the city’s decarbonisation zone, of a multiscreen Dashboard to monitor air quality at multiple locations as part of Galway City Council-led ‘The Air We Share’ project which includes Insight as a partner.
One of the most popular exhibits on the day was a 1970s era public telephone kiosk. Thanks to the technical wizardry of Liam Krewer & Aisling, & using my vintage vinyl record/CD music collection, we set up a ‘Dial-a-Song’ system. It facilitates the user dialing 4 digits between 1955 (birth of rock & roll!) & 2000 on the rotary phone to listen to a particular piece of music from that particular year!

Thanks to the volunteers from the museum board & Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics who acted as guides on the day.
Next public opening date: Sat Jan 24(11am-2pm)