The Future of the Past

 

What does the future hold in store for the past?  Fun?  Excitement?  Positive, even life-changing discoveries?  You can be certain of it!

 

Evidence abounds that since at least the time of the building of the great pyramids, and the writing of the Old Testament, knowing and passing along ancestral history has been of great importance and is precious to humanity.

 

A recent content acquisition and a just awarded contract confirm that the value of ancestral history continues to be treasured greatly today.

 

The stories of our ancestors began moving into our digital future only about three decades ago. Different strategies are being followed.  Some of them are fleeting, and will certainly be replaced by better strategies.  What are the available choices?

 

Content and the Future

 

1. Pre-Digital Content:  Recorded thoughts, beliefs, images, and sounds that are not yet upgraded to digital.

 

2. Stage-One Digital Content:  This is Pre-Digital Content that has been processed into digital format and is displayable on computers, but not yet searchable via computers – unless done through external “tags” which have to be manually added.

 

3. Stage-Two Digital Content:  Stage-One Digital Content that has been processed through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or similar software, and has transformed to become internally searchable via computers.

 

4. Stage-Three Digital Content:  Content, often processed directly from Pre-Digital, which has been thoughtfully organized and precisely stored in a format which allows it to be processed via computers.  Only Stage-Three Digital Content can generate detailed intelligent answers to specific queries.   Equally, or more important, only Stage Three Digital Content is able to generate new, high-quality Stage-Two Digital Content that has never existed before.  This new content creation may be thought of as data-mining.

 

For instance, if you want to know the exact family ties of Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen to Hollywood icons Clint Eastwood and Richard Gere, you can receive the answers from just a couple of mouse-clicks in the Stage Three content of the Family Forest®.  A few additional mouse-clicks will show you maps of the generation-by-generation family ties connecting these stars to their shared ancestors.  A couple more mouse-clicks will show you ……

 

This shows the power, and points to the great intrinsic value of Stage-Three Digital Content, and is the future of the past.

 

The Family Forest® Project is, and has been for almost twelve years, strategically utilizing advancing technology to showcase and pass along valuable ancestral history knowledge in a vastly superior format.  What’s more, it does this in the fun and engaging way that future generations will use to explore their ancestral heritage.

 

Please stay tuned.

 

Bruce Harrison

Ancestral History Tour Guide and Cartographer