alt.hn

7/25/2026 at 5:51:27 AM

Extinct Media Museum Tokyo

 https://extinct-media-museum.blog.jp/otemachi/

by sohkamyung

7/25/2026 at 10:13:21 AM

Some other museums to visit while you’re in Tokyo:

JCII Camera Museum https://www.jcii-cameramuseum.jp/top-e/

Small Worlds Miniature Museum https://smallworlds.jp/en/

Button Museum https://button-museum.jp/en/

World Bags and Luggage Museum https://www.ace.jp/en/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.

by tkgally

7/25/2026 at 1:40:17 PM

I really enjoyed the Ad Museum when I went a few years ago.

https://www.admt.jp/en/

These all look fascinating too. God, Tokyo's really an incredible city, huh.

by wk_end

7/25/2026 at 4:30:19 PM

I would second the ad museum. I really enjoyed it.

by marseysneed

7/26/2026 at 4:03:16 AM

This is great. Tokyo seems to have everything!

by davidkoenit

7/25/2026 at 9:40:15 AM

> 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.

by perbu

7/25/2026 at 5:25:27 PM

Microsoft's Project Silica is intriguing and would be perfect for this if they can get the technology simplified and commoditized. It offers the Star Trek vision of mass storage that could outlast us. Not directly applicable to the needs in your case but is interesting.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/project-silica...

by pstuart

7/26/2026 at 2:52:40 PM

> Microsoft's Project > if they can

They can't. Even if they manage to ship something, they will destroy it with an "update".

by hulitu

7/26/2026 at 7:07:05 PM

The technology seems to work in the lab and the blocker is cheaper femto-second lasers. Others are working on similar approaches and there's likely to be real commercial projects in the future. As laser prices come down and patents expires, there is the possibility of a StarTrek-like glass storage media that can handle the flood of data being generated.

Real Soon Now™

Edit: The project is intended to be for Azure cold storage, so it's not directly consumer facing.

Considering that Azure has more marketshare than GCP we should not dismiss them lightly.

The fact that this is the case still kind of blows my mind. Azure? By those Windows guys? C'mon! Really?

by pstuart

7/25/2026 at 5:06:37 PM

Interesting: What was embedded in the QR code? An identifier for the object? If it's the object's textual data that is embedded: aren't archives as interested in storing the objects as as they are in the contents? Why not images of the object?

by mmooss

7/25/2026 at 9:31:46 AM

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.

by pilaf

7/25/2026 at 11:52:55 AM

Wow, a DAT Walkman [1]! I forgot that this existed, but I am remembering now that I heard about them in college and desperately wanted one. I was (and still am) an avid listener of music. Digital formats were such a leap over analog media at the time. There was an art to holding your portable CD player (on edge, cradled with your palm facing upward) so that the CD did not constantly slip as you walked. It always amused me that my portable CD player was called a “Discman” instead of a “Walkman”, as if Sony knew that walking with one was impractical. They solved that a bit later with portable CD players that had bigger buffers… But a DAT Walkman presumably would not have had the problem at all. But I had neither the funds nor the knowledge of where one might acquire something like this. Technology back then often felt just out of reach.

In college I had a Japanese-American friend who came back to school from a summer in Japan. She had what looked like a little toy cellphone on her keychain. She showed it to me and I said “cute toy” and she responded “it’s not a toy!” She powered it up and showed me the screen. It even had a little trackball to control an impossibly small cursor. Naturally it did not work with networks in the US. But it left me feeling a bit stunned and wondering what I was missing not living in Japan. I think this was in 1999 or 2000.

[1] https://extinct-media-museum.blog.jp/archives/22934077.html

edit: it was probably more like 2002-2003 now that I think about it. It was probably more of a “joystick” than a “trackball.” I wonder if anyone on HN knows which one I’m talking about.

by raddan

7/25/2026 at 6:28:32 PM

DAT Walkmans (Walkmen?) had other problems. DAT transports are vastly more complicated than those used for compact cassette, being a close relative to VHS and other video tapes. They're supposedly nice when they work though!

by LM358

7/25/2026 at 12:23:38 PM

I remember a friend got one of the first mp3 players on the market. I think it was a Sony and could hold less than 10 highly compressed songs. Still, it was tiny and could fit in a pocket and didn’t skip!

by goalieca

7/25/2026 at 5:08:24 PM

It seems like most of the collection is post-1960, leaving out many earlier types of media such as the ediphone and graphophone cylinders.

https://obsoletemedia.org/ediphone/

by ilamont

7/25/2026 at 5:39:52 PM

It's also missing a large swath of computer-only things (that have some incidental overlap with what they have) - noticeably backup tapes; I'd expect to see QIC/SLR, for example.

by bombcar

7/26/2026 at 1:23:17 AM

There's some older stuff, but it seems kinda random. I see also two cameras in their collection (a Speed Graphic Pacemaker, and a Fuji GW690ii) that I have in my cabinet. I will refrain from telling them they are 'extinct' (at least until I run out of film for them).

by Finnucane

7/25/2026 at 1:09:17 PM

I think this nostalgia is useful for reminding us there are aesthetic forms beyond what Jony Ive et al happened to design and became the dominant form factor. The 2000s explosion of MP3 players had a lot of little ideas like the iRiver Clix had 'press the side of the device' as a navigation system

by firasd

7/25/2026 at 1:17:17 PM

I think the irony was that Jony Ive's design was best when juxtaposed.

Sleek minimal material design on the device that grants you access to a skeuomorphic, bevelled and highly-three dimensional interface (on a flat surface) is complementary.

You "feel" the leather grain thats merely visualised because the device leaves nothing else in your mind, you just have the physical touch of a premium material in your hand and nothing else to distract you from the visual.

When that's applied to everything it turns into a bland nothing.

by dijit

7/25/2026 at 3:51:43 PM

This sort of reminded me of my visit to https://www.cameramuseum.ch/en/themuseum/mission/ Camera museum in Vevey, Switzerland.

It is not very big and was difficult for me to follow as I cannot read French. Even with those language barriers on my end, it was fun way to see how photographic media evolved.

by kasperset

7/26/2026 at 8:43:00 AM

I went and I loved it. The owner encourages you to pick things up and try them. I am glad I went.

by nicbou

7/25/2026 at 12:56:15 PM

If you like this, the Dead Media Project's working notes are fascinating, if they're still out there (90s project, Bruce Sterling-adjacent). I was on the mailing list, way back when.

by flir

7/25/2026 at 6:12:04 PM

Techmoan has to visit this place

by Aardwolf

7/25/2026 at 10:43:09 AM 

   Upon payment of an admission fee, visitors are free to take photos, record video, and scan 3D images of the collection.
This is so refreshing as a mindset. Compared to some countries where they are used to ask you to pay an additional fee just to take personal pictures.

by greatgib

7/25/2026 at 2:37:01 PM

I have a single-sided 8-inch floppy disk somewhere

I think it held 160K

But also TRS-80 cassette tape which would be oldest computer medium I have

You would have to save things half a dozen times because most would not load later

It made me realize I could "save" dial-up computer terminal connections to cassette and play them back later (300 baud was very forgiving)

by ck2

7/25/2026 at 9:58:55 AM

I'm currently in the process of emptying a basement and a garage. Stuff from my great-mother, great-aunt, uncle, parents, brothers and myself.

Plenty of different media (medium?): Pathe Baby, Super 8, dia, very old pictures on glass plates, countless floppies, etc.

Sadly "items you own own you" and there's no way I'm letting my kid having to sort, recycle, give as many items as I had to. We're talking, easily, 30 000 items from deceased people. Probably more.

Old pictures from cities (there's probably some interest in those). Old movies too.

Countless pictures from people I don't even know.

I know there's some stuff historians and museum would like.

But I only have one life: I can't take the time to send everything to enthusiasts, museums, etc. So I'm keeping some stuff (those in the best shape) but I'm basically sorting and filling cars and cars and trailers and going to the recycling center.

It's soul crushing.

P.S: and I wonder... Do I have an obligation to digitize some of this stuff so AIs can eventually be trained on it? (seen that they're trained on the entirety of the recorded world's knowledge) Or do I have an obligation to get rid of it so that AI do not get trained on it? Or neither?

by TacticalCoder

7/25/2026 at 10:54:13 AM

I think a wonderful thing about being human is the ability to forget. Not every little detail needs to be preserved forever. What you have is the memories of people that had a well lived life and leave it at that

by sajithdilshan

7/25/2026 at 7:46:58 AM

From the main page ……

What is the Extinct Media Museum ?

The Extinct Media Museum (Tokyo,Japan) is a private museum that collects and exhibits media and media equipment that have died out or are dying out in the process of evolution based on the belief that all media other than paper and stone will become extinct. ……..

by asdefghyk