A place to see all the computers in Seattle (The Living Computers Museum and Labs)

I had a year’s membership to the Living Computer museum and I didn’t even know this museum existed. Because we had a MoPop membership we kept seeing information that it included a year to the Living Computers Museum and Labs. For some reason I thought it would be just a place that grownups could go and look at a bunch of computers so we never went.

Why Instagram is Amazing Yet Again

Then I saw some pics on an Instagram account last year-I think it was from a lovely Seattle blogger named Astrid who runs WanderDaughter and it looked like such a great museum to visit. There were cool tech items we’ve never seen before and old tech items that made me feel nostalgic. So one day this summer the boys and I decided to check it out.

We came home with a membership to this fun Seattle computer museum and have visited a bunch of times since. We tend to go on early release days from school when the museum is almost empty and I can pretend that it’s my living room filled with fun retro games.( It’s actually more like my living room growing up!). We’ve even brought friends for play dates because it’s super easy to hang out here and there is free parking.

Did you grow up with Oregon Trail?

This game lives here and you can play it. There are even maybe three or four iterations of the game so you can play the one you used to play in school when we only had the black screens and green text and then you can move on to the one when Oregon Trail went multi-color. Apparently there is a text only version you can play too. And maybe you can play it on a massive computer from not-really-so-long ago like the giant computer from Hidden Figures.  (I absolutely love this movie-have you seen it?)

Building STEM skills
There is also a center with fun kid tech like blocks called Bloxels and a Mario game which is probably today’s equivalent of Oregon trail.  This is where we learned that Alexa can play the Animal Game too.

Ot
Do you like robots?
There are robots here you can program. And you can make some of them chase you around the museum floor.
I’m glad we have a membership to this place. If it’s still included in the MoPOP I think we might get the combined membership again next year because my guys love both of these places.

Other Seattle Memberships that are Great for Families? 

We also have MOHAI, Pacific Science Center, Museum of Flightand Woodland Park zoo memberships. These are great experience gifts by for Seattle residents. Manyof these memberships also have great reciprocal benefits at other museums when we travel outside of our city too.

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)