Back to the past

Paris, London, Rome, Madrid or Mahon. The point is to travel, to escape for a few days and change the landscape. Disconnecting from the daily routine is, for many, the objective of these days of celebration. Four days in which the destination is not as important as the experience. But, What if we could not only travel in space but also do so by changing eras? This is what the creators of PIVOT propose, an App that will take us back in time.

Still in the project phase, they have started a campaign to raise funds on the famous portal kickstarter, PIVOT It aims to make us travel in time; go back 10, 30 or 100 years without moving from where we are. Magic? No, augmented reality.

At its core, the proposal is nothing more than an image viewer that loads photographs based on the user's location. PIVOT takes advantage of the geolocation from our phone to check the exact location where we are. From there, the fun begins. From a photo taken by the user and detecting the position, it will load a similar image but taken years ago; with it, we can check "in situ" how our environment has changed.

To nourish this impressive Image bank and historical archiveThe app will initially be fed by photographs available in libraries, museums, books and even on Google Maps. However, the idea is that users themselves will upload these photos and help to increase the archive.

This initiative is the work of two Palestinian students, Asthma Jaber and Sami Jotan, who are concerned about history and its future, with a serious risk of disappearance of emblematic monuments throughout the world due to their deterioration but also their destruction by fanatic causes, have wanted to develop a technology that, at least, preserves them in memory and shows them in the maximum splendor of their days. As they themselves affirm in their webPIVOT is important because it “allows us to preserve and share stories and cultures that are at risk of being lost.”

This is the presentation of an App that is expected to be launched soon: