Where Google Earth Needs to Go: Back in Time
- Feb 06, 2009 7:33 AM EST
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When Google announced its next iteration of Google Earth earlier this week, the company also demonstrated a "time travel" feature that allows users to view specific locales with historical imagery -- such as the disappearing glaciers that former Vice President Al Gore uses as evidence of global warming.
It's a shame, therefore, that Google isn't apparently working on what I think might be a cooler idea -- actual time travel. No, no: virtual time travel. Like to 50 million B.C., and beyond.
Think about it. Pangaea. Continental drift. Dinosaurs. Call it Google History.
This isn't so far-fetched. Google worked with dozens of marine-oriented agencies to create Google Ocean, the featured addition to the application's data set. I can't see why a similar number of geological, petrochemical, and scientific agencies wouldn't jump at a chance to extrapolate what the Earth might have looked like as it evolved. And even if actual imagery isn't available, isn't crunching a massive amount of data, and organizing it in a simple, accessible way, one of the core tenets of Googledom?
If you've had a chance to check out the virtual Mars portion of Google Earth (or even the undersea version) you'll see highlighted spheres, or dots -- points of interest. What better way to pinpoint key archaeological digs?
Everything Google has done with Google Ocean and Mars could be done with Google History: video, explanatory points of interest, virtual tours. Tell me which dinosaurs have been found at which sites, why they're there, how they migrated, what they ate. Better yet, tell my son when he turns five. You have four years left.
Can't you imagine moving a slider bar and seeing South America and Africa separate? Watching the Hawaiian islands pop out of the ocean in a blaze of lava? Meteor strikes? Extinction events? Or move the slider the other way, into the future, and watch the coast of California head north into what is now Oregon or Washington?
I'll even give you the transition mechanism: instead of flying "out" and "in" toward the Google Earth, as you can do now, let's say that moving back in time moves the viewer away, while the virtual globe spins rapidly, indicating the passage of time. Then the viewer can zoom in again into the historical location.
I spoke briefly with Google's lead for the project, John Henke, who pronounced the idea "cool," but said it might be best implemented in a layer, rather than in the core functionality of Google Earth. (Net to me, an enthusiastic young guy was pitching a tool to track freighters and their carbon emissions in real time.) But layer, integrated function, whatever. I'm not picky.
But it's curious that Google launched Google Ocean at the California Academy of Sciences. Outside the presentation, dozens of schoolchildren excitedly pored through the exhibits, most of which not coincidentally were marine related. If you're looking for an audience to excite and educate, you can't go wrong with kids. But really: if you ask an average third-grader to decide between a porpoise and a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which do you think they're going to choose?
Just one slider bar, and suddenly you've opened up history to the masses, Google. Think dinosaurs. The expansion of civilization. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The Industrial Revolution. So much data, Google. So much data...