In early April, I had the privilege of spending a few days with Tom Greaves, managing director at CyArk, at the Storage Network World conference in Orlando. CyArk is a non-profit organization with the mission of digitally preserving world's heritage sites using 3D laser scanning and other advanced technologies. Iron Mountain has been working with Tom and his team for a little over a year through our corporate sustainability group led by my colleague, Samantha Joseph.In keeping with our company's work to secure information and help customers access it and use it, the focus of Iron Mountain's philanthropic investments is culture and heritage preservation, said Samantha Joseph. We are thrilled to lend our people, experience and technology to CyArk so they can properly secure the digital blueprints of our most important heritage sites the family photographs of human history.
CyArk is a fascinating organization and Iron Mountain is very proud to provide enabling technology and services to help them achieve their mission.
I had a chance to sit down with Tom at the end of the show and hear more about his story. Here's a transcript of some of our conversation:
Jeremy: How did you get into this world of 3D laser scanning?
Tom: So my first exposure was in about 1999 back when I was a market research analyst. I was attending a conference in Houston, Texas that I was helping to organize and there was a company that brought one of these scanning devices. I saw the data and thought who cares because it looked like a black and white photograph. And then it dawned on me later that this was 3D data and that this was something really special.
A short time later I had an epiphany and realized that industry needs this technology. Law enforcement needs this. Power companies need this. Oil companies need this. And heritage professionals need this. In 2003, my wife and I said this is going to be a coming thing and it needed a voice. So we launched a conference, newsletter and consulting business singularly focused on this market.
Jeremy: Why was building an archive of heritage sites important to CyArk?
Tom: These sites are at risk. We take them for granted. We think if they stood for 5,000 years, that they will be with us forever. Well, that just isn't the case. Some of these sites will stay with us for 2000 years and then they are lost. It was really important to create a digital record of these sites before they disappear. That was a key driver. The other driver is that we lack the resources to save every site physically to restore it. We don't have enough budget or enough time to save every site in a physical format. So we said okay let us preserve them digitally.
Jeremy: Currently, you use this data for producing iPhone/iPad apps and providing drawings so that certain sites that have been damaged can be reconstructed, what other applications are out there? What do you believe the future holds for this 3D Data?
Tom: The first thing I see is our ability to capture the information is going to increase. We are not done with that journey. It is going to get faster, it is going to become less expensive, it is going to become more accurate. We are just at the beginning of this journey. More data is on its way. That is one piece.
I think our ability to disseminate that info in creative ways will also change. We talk around the office about the holodeck. How do we create that virtual experience of being there without actually physically being there?
Jeremy: You are referring to Star Trek where they had technology that transported characters to a faraway land?
Tom: Exactly. Are we at the holodeck stage? No. We are at a very early stage. We see that off in the far away horizon. But the ability to combine different data sets and present them in a creative way is increasing. We see a lot of progress in that area.
We're collecting more data and so we're going to need to disseminate it more creatively. That comes together at the archive, a repository where we know this data is safe and available to us.
Jeremy: What was your favorite site to work on?
Tom: You know, Jeremy, to ask that is a little like asking me do you love your daughter more than you love your sons? I love all of my children. I would be very hard-pressed to pick just one particular site.
Jeremy: Is there any one memory that sticks out in your mind? Is there something that you think is a significant milestone in all the work you've done so far?
Tom: There are a couple of sites where we've managed to help with the reconstruction: one took place in Seoul and the other in Uganda. For the Sungnyemun Gate in Seoul, 3D laser scanner data was used in the restoration. That was particularly gratifying.
Another example is in Uganda: The Royal Tombs at Kasubi that had been torched about 6 months after our partner, SkyBucket, had completed scanning it. So that was gratifying that we were able to bring something back that the data is actually useful for reconstruction. It is not only that we got a snapshot that we've been able to actually assist with the reconstruction. That is extremely gratifying.
Some of the sites are better to experience virtually than physically. I'm thinking of some rock art sites. These sites won't stand up to hordes of tourists visiting them they will be destroyed. So if we can create and we have created digital representation of the sites then these sites can be enjoyed by all of humanity. And you know what? It doesn't matter how many times someone downloads the information from our site, the site is still undisturbed by all of the downloads. That's the beauty of digital preservation of historic sites.
Jeremy, let me take this opportunity to thank the Iron Mountain team for all the help in delivering the archive infrastructure. It is wonderfu
