a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by KapteinB
KapteinB  ·  2106 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What did Earth look like X years ago?

For years now I've had an idea for a product. It's a globe that is actually a spherical LCD display that shows the Earth. On the stand there's a slider for year, so you can choose to see what the Earth looked like at any point in human history. Buttons control what you want to see: National borders, cities, terrain, population density, etc. There's also a toggle for which planet you want to see, with every known planet and moon in the solar system available. Optionally the globe can be connected to the Internet for automatic updates to keep all the information up to date.

I have no idea if the product would even be possible to make. If anyone want to try, you can have the idea for free.





Devac  ·  2105 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've seen a subset of what you're describing in one museum (possibly in Berlin, I'd have to look through my notes/diaries to be sure). In all honesty, while impressive at first, it was a bit difficult to make out what's happening. If you came up too close, you'd see things outside of the direct line of sight appear very blurry. I'd go so far as to say it was somewhat disorientating to look at it while animation was running. Uneven lighting and my own colour blindness seemed to exacerbate those problems.

user-inactivated  ·  2100 days ago  ·  link  ·  
KapteinB  ·  2097 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Wow, that looks very close to how I imagined it! A bit large for home use though.

Devac  ·  2100 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
user-inactivated  ·  2099 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Fair enough! ;) I saw it in a slide in a lecture and remembered this post.

mk  ·  2106 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think that’d be amazing. Make it open source so people could build apps for it.