Enabling the Distributed Family Tree

This is the official research blog for the Distributed Family Tree, an open network of genealogical data and metadata.  In a nutshell, the big idea is that we can combine all available genealogical information on the Internet into a single distributed network.  The foundation for this network is the substance of the Master's Thesis that I am currently working on.

FHTW 2007 Demo Poster

by Hilton on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 | 502 Views

Trying to explain what the Distributed Family Tree Project is all about is hard.  This is probably a shortcoming, a critical flaw, but I get the feeling that as I press forward all will become clear.  I don’t feel directionless, I just have a hard time articulating that direction.  There’s just so much going on.

Well, this is all pretty evident in this poster I threw together for the demo I’m doing at the Family History Technology Workshop.  The top half is intended to communicate how Genesis works: the user specifies research objectives, which are translated into action by software agents, whether it be to gather data and bring it into the local cache, or to analyze the data and draw conclusions.  In a nutshell I’d say that’s what Genesis is.

Where the top half tries to express this idea in terms of components, the bottom shows it as a process.  First a subset of the world’s genealogical data is imported into Genesis (hopefully the subset the user is interested in).  Then software agents analyze the data.  Finally, results are published back onto the Internet.  The process is of course iterative.

What’s really tricky is that I’m not even sure why I’m doing this demo.  It’s not like I have a product to sell.  I just met with the Good Doctor one day and showed him a simple search over the vast collection of PhpGedView websites, and he got excited.  You have to admit, it is pretty exciting, especially when you realize what can follow.  So we decided to show it off.  I guess what I hope comes of this is the chance to talk ideas out with other people, make contacts, and perhaps get some more collaboration going.

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  1. Permalink to this comment Ian Jacobi on March 19th, 2007 at 10:27 am

    It seems to me that part of the difficulty in specifying it is because it’s almost as broad (in some respects) as the goals of the Semantic Web as a whole. It’s not just about storing the data. It’s not just about publishing or analyzing the data, but also about discovery (both guided and automated). It’s a very broad project that has many goals and subgoals.

    Perhaps the most succinct method of describing it is ‘computer-aided semi-autonomous genealogy’ with computers as helpers in the task, rather than simple ‘computerized genealogy,’ where computers merely act as tools/storage in the largely human-guided task.

  2. Permalink to this comment Hilton on March 19th, 2007 at 11:03 am

    When you say it’s almost as broad as the goals of the Semantic Web as a whole I get a little worried. OK, a lot worried :). I’m very happy to be working on it with some very intelligent people.

    And by the way, your summary is spot on. It should have been on the poster!

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