Euromachs Blog

Reconstructing the past, minute by minute, in real time

by paulasimoes Jul 16, 2009 News, Projects

New media has become the number one source of information for the people who use them. If you use FriendFeed or Twitter, two systems that allow communication in real time, you probably already got news about an event that happened just a few minutes ago or you even followed an event, while it was happening, which is very frequently in conferences, where participants transmit what is occurring in real time, through Twitter.

But how about past/historical events?

In less than four hours, you will be able to follow, minute by minute in real time, the launch of Apollo 11, in its voyage to the moon, in a celebration of the 40 years of the event.

You can follow the route and the velocity in the website We Choose the Moon and you can follow the astronauts through Twitter too. For now, the crew is resting.

The idea is not new. In April, this year, a group of people decided to commemorate the date of the Portuguese Revolution of 1974, by transmitting through Twitter (only in Portuguese), minute by minute in real time, the events that led to the coup d’état.

It would be interesting to study these cases to find out how this kind of activity can improve the public knowledge of the past.

Tags: DigitalExhibits, Historical Events, ICT, Multimedia, Reconstruction of the Past, Reinterpretation of the Past