Resisting Cognitive Erosion: Museums as Sites of Negotiation and Alternative Futures in the Age of Digital Overload

Abstract (English)

As digital technologies and algorithmic systems increasingly mediate how young people learn and think, profound transformations are reshaping not only cognitive development but also social agency. This paper explores how museums, often overlooked in digital anthropology, can serve as critical sites of resistance and negotiation against the cognitive erosion linked to digital fragmentation. Rather than framing technological change as an inevitable rupture, I examine how embodied, multisensory learning in museums enables individuals and communities to reclaim attention, critical thinking, and creative reasoning capacities essential for human agency in AI-mediated environments.
Building on interdisciplinary research across cognitive science, museum studies, and media theory, I argue that museums offer alternative epistemic and educational futures that disrupt the deterministic logics of algorithmic media. Through Creative Inquiry approaches, museums foster what Camnitzer calls "art thinking", a meta-disciplinary practice that challenges passive consumption and invites visitors to co-create meaning. Drawing on ethnographic observations and theoretical analysis, I explore how museum environments activate negotiated learning experiences that contrast with the automated, engagement-optimized patterns of digital platforms.
This research contributes to understanding how informal learning spaces become arenas of social negotiation, where individuals develop the cognitive resilience necessary for meaningful participation in an AI-driven world. By reframing museums as infrastructures of epistemic resistance and creative agency, this paper advances the broader anthropological project of uncovering how people respond to and shape the trajectories of digital transformation.