The team at S&T Geotronics had a productive weekend! We had the opportunity to launch our Kickstarter live at Southern-Fried Gaming Expo. We had a great time showing fellow enthusiasts how we prepared for the campaign & answering questions about Open Antikythera.
On day 2 of the event, with our campaign already halfway to it's goal, we met a researcher who has experience with the Antikythera Mechanism: Dr. Adam Spring. We moved quickly to get an expert interview with him, and we want to share that with you here.
Dr. Adam Spring is a seasoned archeologist, having written for Journal of Archaeological Science, IEEE, and GeoInformatics. He has 15+ years of experience with 3D laser scanning technology. https://laserarchaeology.com/
Mathieu: What is your name & occupation?
Dr. Spring: My name is Dr. Adam Spring... I've basically been working with high end 3D imaging systems for over 17 years. Some of the sites I've worked on are places like the Alamo and also places all over the world in countries like Greece and Albania. But yeah, kind got a reputation for what I do over the years.
Mathieu: What do you think of Open Antikythera?
Dr. Spring: So, to see a working version of the Antikythera Mechanism is a really great thing to see. I think it's a wonderful educational tool. And having seen it, I can tell how hard it was to actually make a working version of this. As someone that has experience and understanding in the Antikythera Mechanism, to have a physical version of it is just something that you can't beat. It's a really good educational tool.
Mathieu: What is the value of revisiting ancient artifacts & ideas?
Dr. Spring: I mean, I think one of the things is it makes you think about what a computer actually is in terms of analog and digital. But I think on the other end of it as well is just how a lot of ideas that we potentially see as modern, they've been around for a long time, so I think it makes you think and rethink about things that we maybe take for granted, like computers, but also just ideas that we think are otherwise complex today, that they were complex back then as well, but they were dealing with them in ways that we never really could understand. And also the fact that the Antikythera Mechanism was found by chance through a diving exercise in the early 20th century is just an amazing thing, really.
Mathieu: What is something you wish more people knew about archeology?
Dr. Spring: So archaeology as a subject and a practitioner's discipline, for want of a better term, is it's very multidisciplinary. So, for me, for example, I was either going to go down a computer science route or a history based route, and I ended up using history as a way in which I would end up back in computer science. So I think it's such a broad canvas, but also just once you get hooked on something, it can take over in other ways. And that certainly for me, when it came to the applications of technology, my degrees in archaeology were the things that made me very good at what I was able to become good in.
Mathieu: Thank you for giving us your time today!
Dr. Spring: You're more than welcome. Thank you very much. Cheers.