About Norfolk | This Week | Is GPS really catching on? |
Global Positioning
Systems are catching on... or are they? by John Cardiff First published 10 Apr 2002, updated 10 May 2002 Dick Eastman and others claim Global Positioning Systems are genealogy's next Really Big Thing. (Eastman's article.) But Are they? We'd like to know. If so perhaps we should start including GPS coordinates in this web site's list of Norfolk Place Names and our B-M-D Etc database. Over the last decade many family historians have adopted all sorts of technology -- personal computers, genealogy programs, scanners, cell phones, the Internet and data on CD-ROMs are just a few examples. But "many" is not all. Just as many still rely on pencil, paper, scotch tape and three-ring binders -- technologies as old as the historian herself. And now, just when many of us are finally beginning to understand Windows, RAM and diskettes, here comes another technology opportunity/challenge. To be fair, there are only two Really Hot post-2000 technology advances on most genealogists' radar screens. The first is DNA, the potential to use ancestors' genetic traits to predict and perhaps defend against disease for the next generation -- and to prove ancestry going back centuries. (We'll get more into that in another article.) The second is GPS, small handheld units that can tell us exactly where we are -- albeit just in in terms of longitude and latitude that few of us really understand. My questions are simple: do you
already own a GPS receiver? Do you know another genealogist that does? Do you plan
to get one this year? If so, email
me and tell me so. If (or when) more than a few do, we'll look at
adding Norfolk GPS coordinates to our constantly evolving collection of
online Norfolk genealogy resources. |
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Copyright 2002 John
Cardiff |