Technology and Cultural Preservation

Climate change, prolonged drought periods, the lack of cultural awareness and funding for physical conservation pose severe threats to the preservation of California’s natural and cultural heritage. Digital technologies of data capture and data curation provide viable solutions for the documentation, interpretation, and preservation of heritage sites. Nonetheless, more work needs to be done to understand the effects of new, emerging technologies in creating constituencies engaged in the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. Thus, this talk explores the social role of augmented reality (A/R), mobile apps, and crowdsourcing platforms for citizen science, in fostering cultural awareness and communication among communities of park and museum visitors. This presentation displays the preliminary results of the CITRIS-funded research project Bodie Digital Community �" Connect with your Past. The ideas, methods, technologies, and initiatives, we designed in this project, provide an opportunity to preserve Bodie for years to come. At the same time, this project is a starting point to create social technologies for heritage preservation that will contribute to protect many other natural and cultural places worldwide.