Frederic Kaplan: How I built an information time machine | Summary and Q&A

TL;DR

This content discusses the possibility of creating a "Google Maps of the past" and introduces the Venice Time Machine project.

Key Insights

• 🌍 The image of the Earth provides an interactive bird's-eye view, but lacks the ability to travel through time. The concept of creating a Google Maps of the past and reconstructing historical social networks is explored.
• 🔍 Digitization of historical documents and the use of simulation can help enlarge the available historical space and information. The Venice Time Machine project aims to digitize the vast archives of Venice, which contains detailed records of the city's history over 1,000 years.
• 📚 A 10-year digitization program is underway to transform the Venice archives into a giant information system. This involves digitizing, transcribing, translating, and indexing the documents, which can be challenging due to handwritten text.
• 💡 Drawing inspiration from speech recognition, the project uses models of language and document structure to extract events from the archive. The goal is to extract around 10 billion events that can be easily searched and queried.
• 📅 The information system allows for historical questions to be answered, such as who lived in a specific location in a particular year or the cost of goods at a certain time. The information is also spatially coded, allowing for visualizations and reconstructions.
• 🌐 The project aims to not only understand Venice's history but also place it within a larger European context. The goal is to document what worked at a European level and reconstruct the Venetian maritime empire's journey and control over the Adriatic Sea.
• 🛣️ By analyzing regular patterns in maritime routes, a Mediterranean simulator can be created to answer questions about travel routes, costs, and risks during specific time periods. Handling uncertainty and inconsistency throughout the research process is a central challenge.
• 📖 Documenting each step of the research process, including historical knowledge construction, can help detect and correct errors and inconsistencies. The goal is to create a fully documented potential story of Venice, acknowledging multiple perspectives and maps of history.
• 🎭 The research needs to be communicated to a larger audience, and Venice provides an opportunity to create immersive museum experiences. Reconstructed maps and documents can be explored, allowing visitors to dive into the Venice of a specific year and understand how historical context is decoded.

Transcript

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Questions & Answers

Q: Is it possible to build something like Google Maps of the past?

Yes, it is possible to build something like Google Maps of the past. The concept involves digitizing and extracting information from historical documents, such as log books, paintings, and administrative records, to create a comprehensive information system that allows users to explore and search historical events and data.

Q: Can I reconstruct social networks of the past?

Yes, it is possible to reconstruct social networks of the past. By analyzing historical documents and records, researchers can uncover information about the relationships and interactions between individuals in different time periods. This can help in understanding and mapping social networks of the past, providing insights into historical communities and interpersonal connections.

Q: Can I make a Facebook of the Middle Ages?

It is theoretically possible to create a virtual representation of social interactions and connections in the Middle Ages, similar to Facebook. By analyzing historical documents and extracting data about individuals, their relationships, and their activities, researchers can create a digital platform that simulates social networking in historical contexts.

Q: Can we build time machines?

While we cannot physically build time machines to travel through time, we can develop tools and technologies that allow us to explore and understand the past in a digital sense. By digitizing and analyzing historical records, researchers can uncover and visualize historical events, social networks, and cultural contexts, effectively creating a "time machine" of information and knowledge.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The speaker discusses the possibility of building a "Google Maps of the past" in order to explore historical events and reconstruct social networks of the past.

• The Venice Time Machine project aims to digitize and transform 80 kilometers of archives into a giant information system to extract events and answer historical questions.

• The project faces challenges such as dealing with uncertainty and inconsistency in the data and finding ways to communicate the research to a larger audience.