Microsoft Research is exploring multiple applications of technology in service to the humanities. Our interactive storytelling initiative encompasses a number of Digital Humanities projects—such as WorldWide Telescope, Rich Interactive Narratives, Touch Art Gallery, AIDS Quilt page, and ChronoZoom—that are designed to enable individuals to explore the vast repositories of humanities data that exist, learn about our combined cultural heritage, and use this knowledge to develop insights that benefit the individual, organizations, and society as a whole.

Additional efforts include WorkTop, which provides a unified workspace that helps Digital Humanities scholars capture, display, and link heterogeneous research documents; the Gigapixel Camera project, which is developing new hardware to capture data; and the Materials Simulation project, which uses various algorithmic approaches for modeling fabric and metal to bring ancient and fragile artifacts to life.