Technology and Genealogy: An update

 

The most recent addition to the Apple family of computers is the Mac Studio. If you wanted to buy the top end with the Apple M1 Ultra chip, you would have a computer with a 20-core CPU, a 64-core GPU and 128 GB of unified memory. This in a computer that is 7.7 inches square. Oh, I almost forgot, it also can have to an 8TB SSD drive. This might not mean much to you but because we now have computers like this that are readily available for anyone with the money to buy, we have computer programs using a form of artificial intelligence that can read handwriting.

Just some perspective. The first Apple II computer that I purchased back in about 1982 had about 48KB of memory and the 5 1/4 floppy disks held about 360KB of memory storage. It was also as slow as watching grass grow. By the way, the average digital image of a 4" x. 6" photo is about 6.5MBs. So, the Apple II could not load or process one currently digitized photo. A one Terabyte SSD or hard drive will hold about 250,000 photos taken with a 12MP camera. My iPhone is hundreds of times more powerful than my original Apple II. I can also buy a reasonably priced 16TB hard drive to connect to my computer giving me the ability to store about 4 million images. 

Both FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com are using programs to recognize handwriting. Ancestry's handwriting recognition will be used to index the entire 1950 U. S. Census in a matter of a few weeks. See Ancestry® to Apply Handwriting Recognition Artificial Intelligence to Create a Searchable Index of the 1950 U.S. Census. FamilySearch volunteers will help with checking the accuracy of the indexing. See 1950 U.S. Census Community Project. 

Until now, using handwriting recognition to index documents was unimaginable. Checking the indexing will be ongoing, but it likely that the need for human indexers will decrease over the next few years. There are billions upon billions of documents and not all of them will be subject to computer indexing. You can participate in checking the accuracy of the handwriting recognition software both on a smartphone and on your desktop computer. See Get Involved. 

These advances underwrite the need for computer skills. We often think that a lack of computer skills is concentrated in the elderly population. According to the Pew Research Center, there is still a notable difference between U.S. adults under 30 and those over 65. But the study also notes that adoption of key technologies by those in the oldest age group has grown markedly since about a decade ago, and the gap between the oldest and youngest adults has narrowed. See "Share of those 65 and older who are tech users has grown in the past decade." What has been called the digital divide is rapidly decreasing dure to the availability and cost of smartphones. The main cause of the divide now is based on a person's relative economic level. Many older adults (those most likely to have an interest in genealogy) cannot afford the new technology. For example. an Apple iPhone can cost up to as much as $1,600. At the other end of the spectrum, some smartphones are free with a service contract from one of the providers such as AT&T and Verizon. 

My wife and I still spend a considerable amount of time helping older people with their smartphones and computers and Zoom has added another level of confusion and stress for many people. 

Some of the genealogically oriented apps (programs) are beginning to be so technologically advanced that they are going to measurably change the way we work with and record our genealogical information. For example, Goldiemay.com adds research helps and information analysis to the FamilySearch Family Tree. 

Digitizing photos and documents is still a human labor-intensive project. Very expensive document scanners can digitize books and some types of documents rapidly but most documents still need someone to place the document and turn the pages. 

I can say one thing for certain. The FamilySearch Family Tree will continue to change and will not be anything like we see today in just a few years.