Re: Anyone tried using Google Earth to view a family tree?


"Switcher" <switcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7$P20uThMLZIFwmY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
An idea for presenting my family tree that I'm trying is to use
Google Earth
(download for free at http://earth.google.com).

I've put together a file for my Skinner tree which shows the kind of
thing I mean. If you have a copy of Google Earth you can view it
here -

http://www.familytreeassistant.com/SkinnerTree20080625.kmz

Don't forget to expand the time span slider in the top right corner
of the Google Earth screen (click on the right hand side of the
slider and drag to the right).

The above tree was produced from a GEDCOM export using the Map My
Ancestors program -

http://www.familytreeassistant.com.

I'd be interested in hearing your opinions on whether being able to
visualise your family on Google Earth is something of interest to
people?

Not a lot! One static map overlaid with static information yields very
little information about time-dependent processes such as people
movement. You'd either need a series of maps or video format to show
the movements. Then you'd get into trouble answering questions about
the extent and direction of movement, unless the maps themselves
changed over time to indicate the known world' as far as migraters
would know it at the time of migration. It wouldn't, for example, make
a lot of sense of 'Go West.young man' before America itself had been
discovered!

You've then got the problem of adding the social conditions at the
time which provided the impetus for any diaspora of family. And so on.
You are now getting into multidimensional models moving in time if you
want to draw worthwhile conclusions about who did what and why. The
computational load would be enormous.

Since stats can't be applied to individual decisions on migration, all
that work for one family wouldn't necessarily enlighten anybody else
about their family and its 'random' decisions.

Stats have a place in population movement studies where the object is
to map steady movements of large numbers over time. By definition that
tells nothing at all about how any one individual moved, and genealogy
is the study of individuals.

Oddly to some, the problem of how and why individuals moved is best
tackled with that old technology called a brain. Humans can think in
space and time and multidimensionally, and are not limited by the 2D
surface of a computer screen. Furthermore, we can make shrewd guesses
about what our ancestors did and why, and we can base that on all
sorts of odd snippets of information which a computer couldn't factor
in.

Why did one of my family suddenly depart these shores in the 19th
century? Because his collar was about to be felt if he didn't. Why did
he go to the country he went to? Because he had to connect with the
first boat going anywhere and that happened to be where it was going.

Yet his brother went in a more orderly fashion, as part of a
programme, and to an entirely different country.

In the same line, son was posted to open a branch of the family
business in London, because dad didn't want his drunken layabout son
buggering up the business in Glasgow. Indeed, dad gave the son a
gallon of whisky per week so long as he never crossed the Scottish
border again.

In a different line, a son who was trusted was posted to open a branch
of another family business in a colony with an emerging economy.

There are a lot more examples, and whereas I can hold them in my head
and see the pattern, they include multiple factors which couldn't be
programmed into a computer model. More importantly, they couldn't be
deduced from any mapping of where the parties moved.

So no. It would be a lot of work for less return than I could get in
minutes from assembling the stories in my head.

Don


.

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