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Telecom Italia Future Centre
Page 3
Continued from page 2
Archived article (2004)
ABOVE: Thatcher Imboden converses with an
oracle in a talking well. INSET BELOW: Venice for Visitors makes a guest
appearance on a monitor in the Future Centre's coffee house.
Museum exhibits
The Telecom Italia Future Centre's exhibits are mostly of the
hands-on or interactive variety, not unlike what you might find at a science and
technology museum back home.
 When you arrive at the museum, you're given your own visitor's
card, which looks like a credit card and has an embedded microchip. At each
exhibit, you insert the "smart card" into an electronic reader like the red box in the
photo above. This launches the interactive portion of the exhibit, which might
be a spoken commentary, a video presentation, a computer game, or (as in the
photo) the chance to get your horoscope or an oracle's pronouncements by having
a two-way conversation with a talking well.
Some of the exhibits and services include:
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Venetian routes, where computer-generated 3D recreations
of 15 characters such as Titian, Casanova, and Marco Polo talk to you and lead
you on a virtual tour of the city. (You can even have the characters print out
tourist guides to use after you've left the museum.)
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A stroll into tomorrow, which lets you experiment with
recognition by touch, intelligent shopping, and other emerging technologies.
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A gaming area, which features individual and networked
computer games.
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The water theatre, an art installation in San Salvador's
ancient boathouse (a cavelike entrance with an iron gate that faces a canal).
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A coffee house with free Internet terminals
where you can fetch your e-mail, check the news back home, or browse the
Web. (During our
visit, most of the people using the terminals were local citizens, not
tourists.)
Next page:
Visitor
information
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Hotel tip:
Location can be important when
choosing a hotel in Venice or on the mainland. Before booking, read our
No. 1 Warning
and Venice Hotel
Recommendations by Area.
From our
Venice Travel Blog:
A water taxi ride to Venice Airport
A
warning about water taxis
Venice Railroad Station: a vaporetto view
Long lines at Venice Airport
Free boat trips to Murano
Need to
pee? Prepare to pay
The perils of overpacking
Flood
warning: the sound of sirens
Stupid tourist
tricks
Johnny Depp's palazzo
Venetian daily life
From
Maggie in Venice:
A dog's life in Venice
A
Beagle boards a water bus
Venice Carnival for dogs
Venice cruise review:
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Durant
& Cheryl Imboden's
