Technology keeps changing.
The questions keep returning.
A working archive about cultural knowledge, institutions, storytelling, preservation, and the technologies that keep changing how we create, connect, interpret, and remember.
I started as a journalist. At heart, I’m a folklorist. Somewhere along the way, I ended up running technology teams. Voices of the Past is where those threads meet—and where earlier experiments become evidence for the questions I am still asking now.
We Have a History …
Voices of the Past began in 2008 as an experiment in what emerging digital technologies might mean for people working with history, preservation, museums, archaeology, folklore, and public knowledge.
In 2026, the archive is being rebuilt not as nostalgia, but as evidence: what was emerging, what worked, what disappeared, what changed, and which questions survived the technologies that first brought them into view.
VOICE → EXPERIMENT → STRATEGY
SYSTEM → KNOWLEDGE → MEANING
Critical Questions
Explore by Topic
Fresh Perspectives
Recent writing and new insights from Voices of the Past.
The Technology Changes. The Human Questions Remain.
A conversation with FIU students about oral history connects the recovery of a Web 2.0 time capsule to the AI era—and the human questions that technology cannot answer.
A Modern Stoa: Can Cultural Institutions Make Room for Collective Adaptation?
A visit to Athens’ Painted Stoa becomes a question about where cultural organizations create space for people across roles to think, test, and adapt together.
Preservation Technology Podcast: Interviewing the Field as It Changed
A field notebook in audio, recovered as evidence of a discipline taking shape.
Five Critical Questions
These are the recurring questions used to interrogate both the archive and current practice. They connect work created in different years, technologies, institutions, and formats so visitors can follow an idea rather than simply browse a chronology.
Who gets to speak, and whose knowledge is heard?
Voice, visibility, authority, and participation.
02How do we make knowledge more accessible without losing its meaning?
Context, place, evidence, and interpretation.
03What happens when useful tools become systems we depend on?
Experiments, infrastructure, workflows, and dependencies.
04How do we preserve memory when the systems carrying it keep changing?
Platforms, formats, abundance, loss, and stewardship.
05What should technology strengthen in us—and what should it never replace?
Attention, judgment, curiosity, creativity, and agency.
Featured Media
Legacy selections for now; this becomes the home for new podcast and video work as production resumes.
Picturing Preservation Technology Online with Cultural Heritage Imaging
Photography and computational imaging as preservation research, documentation, and public understanding.
Listen →
The Library of Congress’ Flickr Strategy
One of the earliest large-scale social-media experiments by a U.S. federal cultural institution.
Watch →The Voices
Practitioners, storytellers, researchers, collaborators, and interview subjects across the archive.
Nina SimonMuseums & participation
Dale JarvisFolklore & storytelling
Lisa Louise CookeGenealogy & media
Greg BaldwinMemory & activismExplore by Topic
Recurring ideas across the archive, from early experiments to current practice.
Public Knowledge
Oral History · Crowdsourcing · Genealogy · Archives · GLAM-Wiki · Digital Humanities · Heritage Education · Cultural Institutions
Explore Public Knowledge →Technology & Methods
Linked Open Data · 3D Documentation · Artificial Intelligence · Digital Preservation · Augmented Reality · Digital Archaeology · Preservation Technology
Explore Technology & Methods →Media & Storytelling
Podcast · Video · Multimedia · Social Media · Storytelling · Livestreaming · Journalism · Interactive Experiences · Virtual Tours
Explore Media & Storytelling →Heritage Practice
Folklore & Folklife · Museums · Historic Preservation · Archaeology · Conservation · Cultural Landscapes · Built Heritage · Disaster Recovery
Explore Heritage Practice →Explore the Archive
There is no single correct way through this material. Follow a question, a person, an idea, a year, or search across everything.
The long arc
The timeline will become an interactive discovery layer: hover or focus on a period and story thumbnails rise from the spine; tap on mobile to open a compact story tray.
Timbertown
Oral histories, place, labor, folklife, publications, maps, and research materials.
Explore Timbertown →In Training
Attention, persistence, embodiment, and the work of becoming.
Read In Training →