Google Earth In 4D

Rockgod writes to tell us about Google Earth's latest expansion. From the article: "Google skipped right past the third dimension and landed directly in the fourth (time) by offering historical maps on Google Earth. Now you can travel back in time — for example, I am looking at the globe of 1790. Don't expect detailed high resolution photography from days gone by, but it's still interesting to see old maps overlaid on the satellite imagery of today." I suppose a link to Earth4 would have been good.

today's maps will be historical

[Speare]

I was thinking the other day about this. As new photos become available on Google Earth, the old ones will be removed... or pushed back in time, just like a CVS repository. A hundred years from now, you'd be able to walk the repository backwards and watch the suburbs shrink, the global waters recede, the forests regrow and the ice shelves stitch themselves together. (No guarantees expressed or implied.) Of course, Google would be one of those stodgy old companies that you wonder why they didn't implode in the nanostock scandals of 2065, but I digress.

Google and Wikipedia = sum of human knowledge

[BrentRJones]

In the near future we will be using Web services for all human knowledge and culture.
    History, Geography, Government, Music, Literature, Research, Art, Education...

    We will all routinely wear earpieces and wrist displays and the words telephone, television, media, network will disappear just as the words {carriage} footman, {switchboard} operator and typist. George Orwell got so many, many things right in _1984_ especially Newspeak.

    A Brave New World, NOT! Just a routine upgraded world.

Now what would be really cool...

[perrin]

I wish Google Earth would add the ability to go really far back in time, and see what the Earth (probably) looked like in prehistoric times. Always wanted to watch the movement of the tectonic plates in fast forward on my own PC...

Historical fun.

[B5_geek]

This would be a fun way for history teachers to teach. Imagine Google "Points of Interest":

Jack The Ripper victoms in olde London.
Ghangis Khan/Alexander the Great conquest & warpath
Marco Polo route to the East
Or my personal favorite; combine this data with the Geneology Project to map out the paths that early humans took out of Africa.

Re:Shows how old those damn satellites must be :-)

[tocs]

I think it will be interesting to see how the usual historic inaccuracies will be dealt with.

I recently spent several months looking over historic maps around Newark Bay in New Jersey. Most of what we looked at came from NOAA and while I have a great deal of confidence in the abilities of the mapmakers, there are still many issues having to do with datums and resolution that I never thought about before I started working with historic maps. When you deal with charts and maps you really have to start thinking about things like accuracy verses precision.

Here are a couple interesting documents about the accuracy of charts
Behind the Accuracy of Electronic Charts--What Every Mariner Should Know about Electronic and Paper Charts [noaa.gov]
Chart Accuracy [noaa.gov]

Re:Now what would be really cool...

[Muffhead]

Try this [gearthblog.com].

Needs GE 4 to work.