

Man finds his way home using Google Earth - after 25 years - pkuhad
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2012/03/10/308081_tasmania-news.html

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ajays
While I love the story, I think the headline gives too much credit to Google
Earth. He was able to find his home by joining a Facebook group and asking
people. Yes, he used Google Earth to find the town; but he was able to find
his way home only by emailing people.

Regardless, it's a great story. Whenever technology (be it Google Earth, or
Facebook) makes such a positive impact on someone's life, I find it uplifting.

~~~
ynniv
And specifically an application used to view satellite imagery, rather than
the company that produced the imagery. They might as well credit Internet
Explorer instead of Facebook. Taken to an extreme, they could have credited
Windows XP for the reunion.

Somehow Google Earth is often credited for anything involving satellite
imagery. He probably actually used Google Maps.

~~~
onemoreact
It sounds like he used a combination of Arial footage and street views to
locate the town. Having located it he could have traveled there or even
called, but instead use other services to talk to people in the area. So, IMO
it really was Google street views coupled with maps that let him find the
place.

PS: _He remembered the Khandwa train station and surrounding area_ not a
street name and not what the area looked like from space.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
@sausax, no need to think whether Google have street views (note not
Streetview) in India -
[http://maps.google.com/maps?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Khandwa%20train%20station&oe=utf-8&gl=uk&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wl)
is an image of Khandwa station on Google. IIRC Google Earth have used
Panoramio (sp?) for location images for some time, longer than they've offered
Streetview or indeed location views on Google Maps.

~~~
mayanksinghal
Any particular reason to chose Khandwa? (I am curious as I am from that town
and it is not particularly well known)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Unless I made a mistake Khandwa is where the man was from and he tracked his
family from a memory of the station there.

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mad44
My OCD kicks in.

Where does this odd thing come at the end of the article? "The older brother
who accompanied Mr Brierley on the train ride was found dead on railway
tracks."

Earlier in the article, it was written that Saroo boarded the train after he
got lost. No mention of older brother, which made me think he was alone.

~~~
mad44
Also fuck poverty. I hope we can wipe poverty off the earth soon.

~~~
bh42222
_I hope we can wipe poverty off the earth soon._

Most of the industrialized world can be said to have done that.

Western Europe, Japan, probably Canada too. It is easy* and requires only low
levels of corruption, good law and order, combined with mostly free markets.
Wealth in terms of natural resources is NOT a requirement, Switzerland is
resource wise very poor. (Unless you count scenic views of the Alps as a
resource.)

*When I say easy, I mean possible and requires only changes in human behavior - so super hard in fact.

~~~
DanI-S
I suspect it may also require the systematic exploitation of the remainder of
the world through aggressive pursuit of unfair trade agreements and projection
of military force abroad, but I may be wrong.

Also: the help of a larger, richer friend overseas who is much less concerned
with equality.

~~~
bh42222
It is true the OECD countries are currently bending the developing world over
backwards. But this does not mean that the OECD _needs_ that kind of
advantage. We might not be as rich without it, but we would still be quite
rich.

Also there's very little military projection from the Scandinavian countries
for example.

And I am not sure how the overseas friend helps? If you look at median (not
average) GDP per capita, the US is actually _less_ wealthy than many European
countries. Plus, in terms of trade with Europe, the US is as much a competitor
and exporter as it is an importer.

So I'd say Western European or Scandinavian style prosperity is definitely
possible without UK style ex-colonialism, or US style inequality and military
projectionism.

~~~
DanI-S
You make some good points. I figured that US involvement probably has a hand
in ensuring us a steady supply of fairly low priced oil, but you're right that
other factors may counteract this.

Honestly, it seems so hard to imagine a 20th Century without US influence that
it may not even be worth the effort.

~~~
bh42222
Well the US military involvement does mean it gets some of the lowest priced
oil. What's the price of a gallon of gasoline up to in Europe now, $9 or
something? I think most of the time it is something like triple what the US
pays.

And yet that has not crippled the European economies when it comes to trade
with the US. European cars are more gasoline efficient, and Europeans live
closer together (although this may largely also be due to historic reason long
predating the automobile).

And I think the fear that oil might be radically more expensive for everyone,
unless someone ensures it keeps flowing, is unfounded. If oil is valuable -
people will look to sell it.

Didn't certain groups in Iraq partly fund themselves by exporting oil in
pickup trucks? That's what I mean. Even if an oil exporting area turns to
complete and utter chaos, strong men will arise and they will look to get rich
by selling oil. And how long could the oil exporting states maintain their
quality of life without massive oil exports?

I think you'd have to actively fight to prevent oil from trading rather than
the other way around.

But it is also true that Europe might look radically different if the US had
not pushed for democracy in the west.

That's what's really so depressing about the US and the rest of the world
slowly sliding towards more and more authoritarianism. Who will be guiding
beacon of freedom in the coming centuries? Switzerland is not big enough to
strong arm anyone into being more democratic.

~~~
DanI-S
I'd argue that European gasoline is more expensive purely because European
gasoline taxes are higher - the underlying commodity has a similar cost.
European governments benefit from being able to charge higher taxes on fuel
because US foreign policy helps keeps the oil price down. Thus, they're
indebted to the US, which the US knows.

But yeah - I agree. Authoritarianism is definitely not the way to a prosperous
world.

------
lusr
Impressive - how many people have concrete enough memories from that age? I
have maybe one I could use to locate somewhere, but otherwise that age is lost
to me.

~~~
corin_
I can't help but think that at five years old I could have told anyone that I
lived in Oxford, and therefore wouldn't need to remember what it looked like
to find my way back there 25 years later.

Am I wrong about the ability of five year olds?

~~~
aasarava
Many places in India don't have definitive addresses. They tend to be
relative, such as "across from the train station." And I suspect that when you
live in the slums and are begging at the age of five, your world is quite
small -- the chances that you might leave town on a trip or know someone who's
not from the same area are slim. So you likely don't need to know, much less
practice, the name of your town.

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ShabbyDoo
Yet another example of how hard it is to predict how a product/technology will
be used or what societal benefits/detriments it might provide.

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infocaptor
Vow, first i thought this is the plot from a bollywood movie.

~~~
tathagatadg
There has been too many. But Bollywood doesn't need billions of dollars worth
technology to reunite families! We have (a)fate and (b)a song that the
families sing and dance to in happy days(kids are young, they learn fast).
Decades later, due to fate family gets placed into a 1 mile radius, and the
kinship-proximity sensor gene trigger the release happiness hormones which in
turn makes the family members break into song and dance. Technology is
catching up it seems ...

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gwern
> Mr Brierley said his mother told him of how they had searched endlessly for
> him after he went missing and saw fortune-tellers who told them they would
> one day be reunited.

Hah. I bet they did.

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worldimperator
Good to see that google is finally running an efficient PR department :-)

