# Week 1: The Digital Contemporary: Thinking like a Historian

> This week, we're introducing the course, and GitLab, where the course materials will be stored. We'll also do a first basic exercise in GitLab concerning your reflections on the Venice Time Machine.

## *Venice Time Machine*

From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Time_Machine):

> The **Venice Time Machine** is a large international project launched by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in 2012 that aims to build a collaborative multidimensional model of Venice by creating an open digital archive of the city's cultural heritage covering more than 1,000 years of evolution.

## Links

* [Venice Time Machine](https://www.epfl.ch/research/domains/venice-time-machine/)
* A video introduction [*A virtual time machine for Venice*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQQGgYPRWfs)
* (For your own free time) Frederic Kaplan's TED Talk (June 2013) on [*How to Build an Information Time Machine*](https://www.ted.com/talks/frederic_kaplan_how_to_build_an_information_time_machine?language=en).