Digital Heritage – A Flashback From Vietnam’s Recent Movement

In an era when screens, sensors, and algorithms influence nearly every aspect of our lives, heritage is no longer something distant and static. Digital Heritage – The practice of preserving, reconstructing, and animating history via technology – is transforming how we remember, learn, and appreciate cultural and historical legacies. This phenomenon is reshaping museums, archives, education, tourism, and collective memory globally, and Vietnam is stepping forward as an active player.

In this article, we explore:

• The role of technology globally in preserving cultural and historical heritage.
• How Vietnam is applying advanced technologies, especially VR/AI and other automation, to reconstruct and let the public experience history in vivid and immersive ways, including the recent VR recreation of 2 September 1945. Also, we will cover the NTQ-led digitization of press archives.
• What all this means for national identity, accessibility, and Vietnam’s place in the world.
  

Technology Reshapes How Global Cultural & Historical Heritage is Preserved

Around the world, technology has moved from auxiliary support to central facilitator in heritage preservation. One especially illuminating data point comes from the Museums in the Metaverse (MiM) initiative led by the University of Glasgow: in a global survey of over 2,000 participants, about 79 % of respondents expressed interest in using digital technologies to explore museum collections currently inaccessible to the public. 

The rise of demands and the emergence of new technologies contributed significantly to the digital adoption in preserving historic records. DiMarket reports indicate that the global digital museum solutions market is experiencing robust growth, projected to exhibit a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15% from 2025 to 2033, reaching approximately $8 billion by 2033.

Thanks to digital innovation, the preservation of cultural & historical heritage has been leveraged significantly than ever before. Notable examples include: 

• Digitization of tangible artifacts and documents. High-resolution imaging, scanning, photography, and digitization allow manuscripts, newspapers, artwork, old photographs, physical objects, and documents to be converted into digital formats. These digital surrogates protect against physical decay, loss, or disaster, while enabling remote access.
• 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and laser scanning for architecture and artifacts. Ancient temples, sculptures, ruins, and monuments are being captured in great detail so that even when weathering, war, or natural forces damage them, the capacity for restoration or reconstruction remains.
• Immersive technologies – Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Extended Reality (XR). These allow people to walk through virtual reconstructions of old sites, overlay historical visuals onto modern sites, or relive events that happened long ago. This enhances engagement, learning, and empathy.
• AI, machine learning, OCR (optical character recognition). These tools help convert old, often degraded texts into searchable digital texts; restore damaged parts; assist in pattern recognition across large heritage datasets; and even suggest reconstructions or translations. They are especially useful for large archives or where human labor would be prohibitively slow or expensive.
• Digital museums, virtual exhibitions, and metaverse platforms. These allow heritage content to reach global audiences, bypassing geographic limitations. They enable interactive storytelling, multimedia integration, and dynamic exhibits that adapt or engage with visitors in more profound ways.
• Risk management, redundancy, and disaster preparedness. Digitized records provide backups in case physical heritage is lost due to natural disasters, conflict, climate change, or simply decay.
  

Vietnam’s Innovation Highlights – From Preservation To Recreation 

Vietnam has, in recent years, embraced many of these ideas. Below are several concrete examples, including the VR project for 2 September 1945, as well as NTQ’s digitization work, and other tech-driven heritage efforts.

Recreating The Historic Moments During the 80th Anniversary of Vietnam’s National Day 

The celebration of the 80th Anniversary of Vietnam’s National Day this year was vibrant than ever, in which the public & tourists had chances to explore activities that come along with a unique approach of introducing the history & culture. Not just limited to traditional exhibitions or national concerts, many organizations strived to adapt emerging technologies, including AI, AR/VR, and holograms, to recreate the historic moments into interactive experiences. 

The “Return to sacred moments”, A project led by Voice of Vietnam (VOV), in partnership with the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology (PTIT), VTC News, historical researchers, and archival sources, is one of the highlights that capture the public’s attention during the National Day Celebration. This project applies VR (virtual reality) and AI (artificial intelligence) technologies to recreate the atmosphere of September 2, 1945 with striking authenticity and emotion. Visitors can journey back 80 years, standing at Ba Dinh Square as President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence, and experience the moment amidst lively scenery. They can freely move, observe, and interact in the vivid 3D space, even raise their hands and shout out their support oath.

At the house of 48 Hang Ngang Street – A historic place where President Ho Chi Minh drafted the Declaration of Independence 80 years ago, a special exhibition space was organized, featuring a series of narrative themes about the context that led to Vietnam’s Independence Day. Aside from showcasing the preserved documents & items, the exhibition applied emerging technologies, including mapping technology, VR, and holograms, to augment the visitors’ experience and leverage its educational value. 

Preserving Vietnam’s Press History Through Digitalization

For nearly a decade, collector Nguyen Phi Dung has devoted himself to preserving an extraordinary private archive of more than 400,000 newspapers and magazines, weighing over 23 tons. These publications span from the 19th century to the present day, capturing milestones of Vietnam’s history—from wars and national independence to economic reforms and social change. Each issue is more than printed paper; it is a witness to the nation’s collective memory, offering unique insights into public opinion, cultural values, and historical events.

However, the physical nature of this archive posed serious risks. Old newspapers are fragile, prone to tearing, fading, and discoloration. Preserving them physically is costly and limited, while access for researchers, students, and the wider public remains constrained. Without intervention, a vast part of Vietnam’s cultural heritage could be lost.

To address this, Mr. Dung partnered with NTQ, a leading Vietnamese technology company specializing in AI, to launch an ambitious digitization project. The mission: to safeguard and modernize access to Vietnam’s press legacy by transforming fragile paper archives into a secure, searchable digital collection.

NTQ’s AI experts deployed advanced OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to convert scanned pages into searchable text, even with old, blurred, or unusual fonts. Image enhancement tools were applied to restore faded pages, straighten layouts, and repair damaged edges while maintaining authenticity. The system also generates metadata—such as headlines, topics, dates, and locations—to enable fast and accurate searches. Additional features include automated tagging, sensitive content filtering, and text-to-speech support for visually impaired users.

The project’s vision goes far beyond technical preservation. By digitizing hundreds of thousands of publications, it opens access to a broad audience—researchers, historians, educators, and younger generations—who may never have touched the original print editions. The database ensures that Vietnam’s press history is not only preserved but also made living, accessible, and shareable.

This collaboration illustrates how technology can serve culture. By joining hands with NTQ, Mr. Dung transforms his personal passion into a national contribution, ensuring that future generations can study, reflect, and draw inspiration from the press that has chronicled Vietnam’s journey through time.

Conclusion

Thanks to recent advances in VR, AI, 3D scanning, and large-scale digitization, historical and cultural heritage can be preserved with fidelity, but also made alive in new ways. These technologies bring motion, sound, light, interactivity, and emotion back into our understanding of the past.

In Vietnam, projects like Returning to the Sacred Moment show how technology can recreate the sacred atmosphere of Ba Dinh Square on 2 September 1945, allowing people to step into history in a way that is visceral, communal, and deeply felt. Add to that the ambitious digitization of newspapers and press archives, the 3D scanning of artifacts, and VR/AR applications in heritage tourism—these are not just preserving relics, but creating access, connection, and identity.

For the people, especially the young generations, this means history is no longer a dry chapter in textbooks: it becomes an experience, something they can touch (virtually), hear, and feel. It fosters pride, curiosity, and understanding. On a broader scale, digital heritage enables Vietnam’s cultural and historical values to travel beyond borders—reaching global audiences, contributing to scholarship, inspiring art and media, and helping in diplomacy and cultural exchange.

NTQ is proud to be part of this movement—partnering to build and digitize press archives, helping to make our shared heritage accessible, usable, and vivid. We believe that preserving the past is not an end in itself but a path to building a stronger identity, education, and connection. And as technology continues to evolve, we are excited by what can come next: richer immersive reconstructions, deeper AI enhancements, more inclusive access, and ever more creative expressions of Digital Heritage.