From Rotary Phones to MSN Messenger, Australia's Newest Museum Celebrates Communication Technologies

Some museums are filled with art. Others are dedicated to interesting pieces of history. The National Communication Museum in Melbourne, Australia's latest, falls into the second category. It's also a museum with a hyper-specific focus, celebrating the technology that's allowed humanity to interact and, in the process, shaped how we engage with each other. Rotary phones, cyber cafes, MSN Messenger: they all get a nod here.

Opening to the public on Saturday, September 21, 2024, and marking the first new major museum in Melbourne for more than two decades — since the Melbourne Museum launched — the National Communication Museum lives and breathes nostalgia, then. Phone boxes, burger phones, the speaking clock that you could call to get the time and only shut down in Australia in 2019: they receive some love as well. But this space isn't solely about looking backwards, with peering forwards also part of its remit. Yes, that means grappling with what artificial intelligence might mean for communication in the future.

Emily Siddon, NCM's Co-Chief Executive Officer and Artistic Director, calls the two-level Hawthorn site "a trip down memory lane", but also notes how it looks at the present and what might come.

"The technologies featured in NCM were developed in response to the innate human need to communicate and connect — yesterday, today and tomorrow," she explains.

"It also answers the pressing questions about communication technology today. Things like: how far away are we from uploading our consciousness? How am I tracked and where does my data go? And how can I tell real from fake or human from machine?".

Across an array of rooms featuring both permanent and temporary exhibitions — located in an old 1930s telephone exchange building, which includes a working historical telephone exchange — visitors can dive into First Nations storytelling, celebrate the speaking clock, explore a 90s-era internet cafe and check out an interactive display that takes its cues from regional Australia's phone booths.

There's also a section dedicated to research, spanning both successful and unsuccessful ideas, plus launch exhibitions dedicated to surveillance, the human-made satellites sent into space to circle the earth and the infrastructure underpinning digital communication.

Find the National Communication Museum at 375 Burwood Road, Hawthorn, from Saturday, September 21, 2024 — open 10am–5pm Wednesday–Sunday. Head to the venue's website for more details.

Images: Casey Horsfield.