Ancestry Magazine

Ten years doesn’t sound like a long time. But in the last ten years, we’ve seen tremendous changes in how we approach family history—the Internet, digital cameras, online communities, e-mail, faster and more accessible scanning technology. So what will the future—even just the next ten years—bring to our pasts?

There are a number of trends in technology that we can identify—devices and tools become smaller and faster with greater storage capacity; communication infrastructure improves so we can share information more quickly and clearly. Simply put, the idea of sending or receiving large amounts of information anywhere, anytime, in the blink of an eye, is neither far-fetched nor far-reaching. Plus, digital dominates—music, video, photos, vital records—if it’s not already digital, it’s about to be.

Add to that humans and our wants regarding technology. As consumers, we demand control. Think TiVo—we want to watch what we want, when it’s convenient for us. That desire extends beyond entertainment into how we access information, whether we’re checking the weather or growing a branch of our family tree.

What does this mean for the future of family history?

1. Digital Bonanza
Ten years ago there were just handfuls of digitized records with genealogical value. Today there are well over 6 billion (Ancestry.com boasts 5 billion searchable names alone). How many such records will exist ten years from now? My guess is a number with at least 13 digits in it—meaning trillions. Why? For one thing, new records are being created in digital form—the number of digital vital records and records with genealogical value created each day by governments and other organizations across the world is staggering. Add to that the ever-increasing speed at which organizations like Ancestry.com, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and others are digitizing older records and microfilmed records. And then throw in the millions of new digital photos being created and stored each week by families across the globe. You’ll see how quickly it all adds up.

2. Life, Camera, Interaction
Imagine looking at a marriage certificate from 1926 and clicking a button to see and hear more about marriage customs at that time and place in history. Or selecting a virtual death record that details the common causes of mortality in that time period. High-speed, broadband, and wireless Internet access will enable records with audio and visual information attached, allowing interactive and fun exploration for family historians. And new tools will make it easier than ever to attach your own commentary to family records, photos, and histories.

3. Here and There and Everywhere
The prevalence of GPS (global positioning satellite) equipped devices will unlock a new wave of location-based genealogical services. Soon, we’ll see services that help you make the most of travel by alerting you to family history exploration possibilities. If you’re visiting a city, you may want to download a map to your cell phone that shows where original, time-period-specific family history records can be found. A similar service could help you navigate cemeteries or could notify you when you’ve entered a city that intersects with your family history: “Welcome to Philadelphia. Your great-great-grandmother Elsa Barrow was married here in 1889. Would you like to contact any of the following current residents of Philadelphia who are also her descendants?”

4. Hide and Seek
Programs and websites already conduct business for us behind the scenes—for example, scanning for viruses or searching for specific keywords on a daily basis in news articles—often without us realizing it until they alert us that something important has happened. In the future, similar technology will be used as research agents to help us uncover family history. These agents will sift through and monitor search engines, message boards, databases, and other resources on the Web, and they’ll let us know when they find something interesting or relevant to our family history. Web service agents will help us verify sources and corroborate information in our family trees and make it easier for us to store and interact with our family trees online. That means we won’t have to be at our home computers to edit our family trees. Nor will we have to copy GEDCOM files to disks to share them with others.

5. Catch All, Tell All
We’re already seeing a flood of digital devices that help us capture our life as it happens, store it, and communicate it easily to others—digital music players, digital cameras, digital cell phones, and digital video cameras. So it’s not far-fetched to imagine that in ten years we’ll all be carrying a single pocket-sized device that easily captures, records, sends, and plays back sound, video, images, smells, and anything else that can possibly be translated into digital form. Pretty cool personal journal maker and family history capture device, don’t you think? Self-publishing is an important and growing trend, and new tools will make it even easier to edit and publish our memories; additionally, tools for creating entertaining and engaging stories about our ancestors will make it easier for any family historian to sit in the director’s chair.

6. Genes That Fit
Currently we can use DNA tests to help us see if we’re heading in the right direction with our family history assertions. But there’s much more to come. Right now, scientists are working on ways to identify patterns of genetic markers that will help us hone in on the right genealogical data—not just your father’s father’s father or the continent your mother’s people came from six thousand years ago, but the information you’ll need to verify assumptions and collaborate with other family historians whose own DNA puts them on or near your family tree.

7. Longer, Stronger Branches
Medical researchers are increasingly finding genealogical and genetic data to be a goldmine for predicting, understanding, and possibly even curing many diseases. Knowing the health history of your family lines will play an important role in correctly diagnosing ailments and applying custom-designed medical cures, which will give people an even greater incentive to discover their family history. Because of this, we’ll all see better tools for tracking and organizing family health records alongside more traditional genealogical data.

But before we imagine too far into the future, there’s one more prediction that we’ll need to watch out for and that is guaranteed to come true—that all of the digital data we’re creating today will present a new challenge for tomorrow’s family historians. Imagine a descendant trying to figure out how to access personal journal files on a floppy disk or county government deeds from off-site sequential-tape backups. Suffice it to say, computer forensics will be a skill that’s very much in demand in family history.

Whether prediction, fact, or just wishful thinking, the one thing we know for sure is that people tomorrow will be just as interested in understanding their roots and staying connected with family members as people are today. And tomorrow’s technology will provide us with an array of tools for accomplishing genealogy goals and making family history simpler, richer, and more accessible to everyone. Now, if we could just have those tools today.

Dave Moon is the Chairman of MyFamily.com, Inc., a member of the Board of Directors of the National Genealogical Society, and the former Chief Technology Officer of WordPerfect Corporation.