Europa builds a Time Machine – Big Data of the Past turns into reality

The European Commission has chosen Time Machine as one of the six proposals retained for preparing large scale research initiatives to be strategically developed in the next decade. €1 million in funding has been granted for preparing the detailed roadmaps of this initiative that aims at extracting and utilising the Big Data of the past.

Time Machine foresees to design and implement advanced new digitisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to mine Europe’s vast cultural heritage, providing fair and free access to information that will support future scientific and technological developments in Europe.

“Austria takes an outstanding position in the Time Machine project,” says Dr. Thomas Aigner, Director of the St. Pölten Diözesanarchiv and president of the international archive network ICARUS (International Center for Archival Research) based in Vienna. On the one hand, this can be ascribed to the fact that of the 233 institutions involved, around 35 are located in Austria, including e.g. the Vienna University of Technology and the Austrian National Library. On the other hand, with ICARUS President Aigner, an expert from Austria is part of the management board, which is made up of leading researchers in science, technology and cultural heritage in Europe.

Read the full press release by the European Commission here.

Our ICARUS press release (in German) is available here.