One of the drawbacks of charting a two-dimensional family tree is that the lines connecting related individuals tend to cross each other: the more complex the family, the greater the number of such crossings.

The computer program that created the above tree solves that crossover-connection confusion by extruding the lines into the third dimension, whereupon the viewer is allowed to navigate the space by means of rotation and zoom.

I appreciate eye-candy as much as the next person but the “virtual” tree does not really deal with what I feel is a bigger issue in family-network representation: The placement of individuals is exclusively under program control and often results in widely separated close kin as well as awkwardly juxtaposed distant cousins. A little artificial intelligence and/or user input might better the situation.

The pictured tree is part of my wife’s clan: currently over 1000 individuals. The central yellow avatar is a died-in-infancy male whose exact dates of birth and death — markers separated by twelve days — I only just yesterday ascertained.