Using Technology to Democratize Archaeological Knowledge
This is my first post as a member of the CURVE project–and I’d love to introduce a little about myself and my goals while working at such an awesome space. For anyone who doesn’t know me–my name is Robert Bryant. I’m currently an M.A. student in the Anthropology department, studying archaeology with a focus on software/hardware methodology within a praxis framework. That sounds really official sounding, so to make it sound more exciting–I’m heavily interested in freely sharing archaeological and historical information over through the democratic access of the internet. I think everyone should have equal access to our shared cultural heritages and getting all data online, accessible, and more importantly engaging, fosters an extremely community forward interpretation of the past. How can this be accomplished? The term ‘public’ has positive connotations but can easily fall short on civic engagement–or “Working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes.” So, how can open public access to these collections be extended directly to its communities and stakeholders without endangering artifacts and carefully organized datasets? The answer lies in current technological innovation. With the advent of high-speed internet data transfer rates, data digitalization technologies(such as the recently acquired NextEngine scanner at CURVE), and the wide-spread availability of computing devices capable of processing these large datasets—like smart phones, tablets and … Continue reading