From The Past: August 9, 2008
Kevin installed Microsoft Live Search Maps (2024 Update: This is Bing Maps. It’s nowhere near as good as Google Maps, but back in 2008, this was a big deal.) on my computer last night. It was free and didn’t take long to install. With it, I can type in a street or exact address and see a 3-D layout of the land. I can type in your address or my address and see how much land you have and basically what the house looks like on the outside. I am able to also see the cars parked in the driveway, driving down the street or even parked at businesses.
As I was looking around Winchester, I noticed that some parts of this map had been updated about a year ago, while other parts of our town had not been updated in three years. I’m sure keeping up with growing and changing cities is a daunting task.
The map does not say when certain parts of town were last updated, but I know what business are in certain places that were being built or are not there at all on the map such as banks, gas stations, and drug stores.
I had fun typing in addresses and then, finally, simply dragging the curser and following roads to see where they led. I followed one road out to Andrew’s middle school of many years ago. Once there, I started thinking about things that had happened since the map was last updated. I thought about who was still alive when the satellite photo was taken and who had since died. It became almost eerie once I started thinking of the map in these terms. It was almost as if I could go back in time.
I went to the house of a relative who was still married when the satellite photo of their house was taken. I thought about whom they were as a couple at that time and how so much had changed since then. I went to other addresses and thought about other people who were in totally different places in their lives when those photos were taken.
It made me wish I could somehow go back and save them; tell them what things would be like in their future if they followed certain paths or warn them to do what they wanted while they were still alive because within a few years, their life would end.
Who would have thought looking at a map could become so macabre. I would assume we all have these thoughts in one way or another; they just pass through our psyche in different ways.
We all wish we could go back and change things or warn people of impending doom, but we can’t. There is nothing we can do today. What’s done is done and we can never return to those days when things were tough, but people still had a good life.