Human history is filled with culture and ancient ways of living, and ever since the first humanoid beings on earth learned how to leave marks to represent something, history has been happening. Humans found good ways to leave their marks in the ever-flowing and mysterious flux of time, from the simplest markings on walls made from concoctions of animal blood and plants to the most complex and thorough language and writing systems, but neither have had the most notoriety as statues and sculptures. From the smallest talisman of a representation of a god according to a culture to the most grandiose monuments such as the Egyptian Pyramids, these sculptures of time have travelled through the ages and have taught each coming generation about their past, their origins, their culture and way of life, their beginnings. They are also great attractions that attract tourists daily! But what happens when nature turns against us? When earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes engulf places of the world in nature's magnificent ire, what happens then to those beacons of history? Many are destroyed, much to our shame. However, Ben Kacyra believes he has found the answer to this complication, and it may sound like it came out of a science-fiction comic book. He "was instrumental" in creating the first portable laser scanner which allows for big structures to be scanned in a three-dimensional plane and be viewed in a computer. Ben explains that since the statues of Buddha were attacked and destroyed by the Taliban and an earthquake wiped out an entire mud city in Bam, Iran he wanted to do something to preserve these marks in time, therefore he created the company CyArk which specializes in these procedures of scanning large monuments for electronic preservation and easy access for viewing of the masses via the internet. He plans on scanning and electronically preserving 500 monuments in 5 years, he has already completed the scannings of Ancient Thebes, Chichen Itza, Fort Laramie, Mesa Verde, Mount Rushmore, Pompeii, Rapa Nui, Sydney Opera House, Tikal, and his native Mosul.
I think it's fantastic that this company is scanning and storing these monuments by thoroughly scanning them. This way, millennia of history can be stored and viewed by the masses and studied. Children can access, by the click of a button, all that history and be enriched from all that data, and in case something happens to those monuments at least there is a visual representation of what magnificence it held before its demise. Maybe in the future, when the technology is ripe, there may be ways of restoring those lost monuments from those electronically scanned blueprints!
very cool!!
ReplyDelete