We now have better technology than ever before for studying and preserving the past but at the same time, this very technology threatens to destroy monuments, works of arts and ways of life that have survived thousands of years of hardship and war. This study describes the high-tech struggle to protect the Great Sphinx and the Ganges, efforts to preserve Latin within the Vatican and the digital glut inside the US National Archives. critical projects. Throughout, his focus is not just on the past, but on our ideas about the past, how they are changing - and how they will have to change if our past is to have a future.