Historically, history is pretty dry. So-and-so did something-something some time back when? Who cares?
Two technological waves are about to collide, changing history from the abstract into something very real.
The first wave was the rise of the smartphone, which has increased the historical footprint of every person on earth by several multiple orders of magnitude. Our lives are now recorded to a fidelity unimaginable even by most prolific ink-barrel-buyers of the previous age.
The second is the rise of AI, and in general our ability to take a corpus of data and weave it together into a higher level of reality. We've gone from taking a photo to generating a 3D reconstruction of that image, to making a movie, and onto using the latest advancements in game engines to turn it into a video game.
The combination of these two waves is going to change the way we experience history—it’ll turn your photo library into the holodeck.
Imagine your great-grandkid wandering around your apartment, or last week existing as an experience you can (re)load. Your own personal history will be made immersive and explorable, coming into focus with each new model—for you and every future generation from here forward.
And that’s the catch. None of this works on the past; the footprints of those who came before us aren’t big enough.
Welcome to the era of digital history—you're now the first ancestor of the future.
