Visible Past Gwiki

Imagine an online historical atlas where each historical event would be mapped and annotated with text, diagrams, pictures, videoclips, and audiofiles. http://www.visiblepast.net

Imagine... a site where people interested in the same historical events, places, monuments or periods can network.

Imagine... a site that can automatically index information and create clusters of events, places or historical personalities based on the users common interests in them.

Imagine... a site that can recommend the best books or articles available for a specific historical topic.

Imagine... a service that would deliver to your cell phone information about any spot on the planet you might find yourself at.

Imagine... a room with life-size screens on which virtual models of the ancient Roman Forum, of the Omaha Beach Battle or of the Forbidden City would be projected and interacted with in 3d.

Now imagine... there was a way to make available for reading or editing the information stored by the atlas to the person using the cell phone in Rome, at the ruins of the Roman Forum. Imagine that the person in the 3D virtual reality room could visualize all the data contributed by the visitors of the online atlas.

Finally, imagine the people using cell phones, desktop computers or full immersion 3d virtual reality models talking to each other through a communication system that allows them to share impressions, passions and ideas.

These ideas do not belong to the realm of science fiction. They are the product of the Visible Past project, initiated by a group of faculty at Purdue University. Visible Past is a seamless network of information that turns the idea of information searching and retrieval on its head. Spatially locating and disseminating information, Visible Past takes the pain out of searching for information because through it information searches for you.