Random thoughts I was having yesterday got me thinking about how Facebook in the U.S. has exploded over the years, and how nearly every living family member of mine now has an account there. Assuming (and this is a BIG assumption - suspend your disbelief for now) Facebook sticks around 100 or more years, we'd have a nice way to track genealogy. It has reached a sort of critical mass here in the U.S. which makes it pretty difficult for a competitor to come along and replace it. So let's say it sticks around for a while.
100 years is several generations. My family never kept many records, so I have a lot of holes that will probably never be filled regarding past relatives. Websites like ancestry.com want me to do all the leg work and have very little information for my family. Now that I'm a first time father of a newborn little girl, I was thinking about future generations containing my genes running around and looking back at their family history.
If Facebook is still around, they could not only look back at their various relatives, they could get a unique perspective of everyone's personality. They could see just how warped some of us were, and see some how cool others were. They could look at vacation photos. They could look at articles that were shared. This is certainly something I wish I had right now for my genealogy (maybe not quite in that level of detail), and I'm hopeful something like that will be there for my future generations.
That being said, it does require Facebook to continue on with a big role for generations to come which is something every social network has failed to do so far. There are other social websites out there that are huge in other countries too, so having family members spread around the world would make it difficult to connect the details.
I also fully expect (demand!) that the Internet be wired directly into my brain if I'm still alive in 100 years. I want the Internet, cat pictures and all, to be an extension of my brain by then. :D
100 years is several generations. My family never kept many records, so I have a lot of holes that will probably never be filled regarding past relatives. Websites like ancestry.com want me to do all the leg work and have very little information for my family. Now that I'm a first time father of a newborn little girl, I was thinking about future generations containing my genes running around and looking back at their family history.
If Facebook is still around, they could not only look back at their various relatives, they could get a unique perspective of everyone's personality. They could see just how warped some of us were, and see some how cool others were. They could look at vacation photos. They could look at articles that were shared. This is certainly something I wish I had right now for my genealogy (maybe not quite in that level of detail), and I'm hopeful something like that will be there for my future generations.
That being said, it does require Facebook to continue on with a big role for generations to come which is something every social network has failed to do so far. There are other social websites out there that are huge in other countries too, so having family members spread around the world would make it difficult to connect the details.
I also fully expect (demand!) that the Internet be wired directly into my brain if I'm still alive in 100 years. I want the Internet, cat pictures and all, to be an extension of my brain by then. :D
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1qS9Cbs
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