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Providing Addresses for 4 Billion People Using Three Words (mondaynote.com)
HughPickens.com writes: 75% of the Earth's population, i.e. four billion people, effectively "don't exist" to modern computer systems because they have no physical address. The "unaddressed" can't open a bank account, can't deal properly with a hospital or an administration, and can even struggle to get a delivery. Now Frédéric Filloux writes at Monday Note that What3Words, a London startup, is seeking to solve this problem by providing a combination of three words, in any language, that specify every 3-meter by 3-meter square in the world. Each square has a 3-word address that can be communicated quickly, easily and with no ambiguity. Altogether, 40,000 words combined in triplets label 57 trillion squares. Thus far, the system has been built in 10 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Swahili, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish and, starting next month, Arabic. All together, this lingua franca requires only 5 megabytes of data, small enough to reside in any smartphone and work offline. Each square has its identity in its own language that is not a translation of another.
Messy addressing systems have measurable consequences. UPS, the world's largest parcel delivery provider, calculated that if its trucks merely drove one mile less per day, the company would save $50m a year. In United Kingdom, bad addressing costs the Royal Mail £775m per year. "One might say latitude and longitude can solve this. Sure thing. Except that GPS coordinates require 16 digits, 2 characters (+/-/N/S/E/W), 2 decimal points, space and comma, to specify a location of the size of a housing block," writes Filloux. "Not helpful for a densely populated African village, or a Mumbai slum." The system is already being used to deliver packages in the favelas in Brasil with Cartero Amigo, solar lights to the Slums in India with Pollinate-Energy and mosquito traps in Tanzania with in2care. For What3Words, the decisive boost will come from its integration in major mapping suppliers such as Google Maps or Waze.
Messy addressing systems have measurable consequences. UPS, the world's largest parcel delivery provider, calculated that if its trucks merely drove one mile less per day, the company would save $50m a year. In United Kingdom, bad addressing costs the Royal Mail £775m per year. "One might say latitude and longitude can solve this. Sure thing. Except that GPS coordinates require 16 digits, 2 characters (+/-/N/S/E/W), 2 decimal points, space and comma, to specify a location of the size of a housing block," writes Filloux. "Not helpful for a densely populated African village, or a Mumbai slum." The system is already being used to deliver packages in the favelas in Brasil with Cartero Amigo, solar lights to the Slums in India with Pollinate-Energy and mosquito traps in Tanzania with in2care. For What3Words, the decisive boost will come from its integration in major mapping suppliers such as Google Maps or Waze.
I can't imagine this being useful for a post office in developed countries. Drones on the other hand, are going to deliver packages in a back yard and if you can tell the drone search for a place to drop a package in a 3m by 3m square that's definately useful. Especially if there is a designator nearby to better pinpoint the landing zone.
Inefficient for a computer, but very efficient for a person, who has significant dedicated hardware for language processing. That's why using combinations of words makes a good password for a human to remember, but hard for a computer program to crack. https://xkcd.com/936/
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
75% of the Earth's population, i.e. four billion people, effectively "don't exist" to modern computer systems because they have no physical address. The "unaddressed" can't open a bank account, can't deal properly with a hospital or an administration, and can even struggle to get a delivery.
Because those Kalahari tribes are really desperate to receive pre-approved credit card spam, hospital bills, and their Amazon Prime deliveries.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It is not a great solution. What happens when you don't live at ground level but on the second , third or 100th floor?
It doesn't factor in altitude.
At least in gps you could add altitude easily enough.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Well, think this is an example from TFA (Japanese characters removed):
Apparently, in some places addresses can get pretty screwed up.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sure, but how much brain space does it take to remember "58.169564, -153.170992" versus "leave aura corrugated"?
We're not computers - we remember words and phrases much better than we remember arbitrary number strings. How many bits it takes to store that information in a computer is irrelevant.
Then you add "unit N", like you do now.
Japanese addresses are so generally screwy that it is normal behavior to draw maps when giving directions.
Do you know what the real "lingua franca" is? Numbers. And numbers don't need a fancy encoding that requires the use of a computer to map it back to actual location information.
Not when someone in the US has to speak these 3 words to someone whose primary language isn't English.
Words become much harder to comprehend over the phone with someone in India when they are used out of context.
Also, what problem are we trying to solve?
"People without addresses can't open bank accounts"
Well this isn't an address. And people without addresses can't get mail so why would the bank accept this as an alternative.
How could someone ever prove they lived at this 3 word address.
As has been pointed out, some of these places are things like the favelas in Brazil ... there's no numbering, it's a chaotic mass of shacks.
The whole point of this is there often isn't a street name, or a street number, or a street, or anything which could otherwise be thought of as an address.
But, hey, keep thinking your 'simple' fix of just including the unit number actually has anything to do with a complex problem.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
http://www.mondaynote.com/wp-c...
Nice job, dingbat. Your image shows an address collision within about 500 metres.
And you need to learn about drop shadows, or at the very least adding outlines to text.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
In a high rise residential building, 3x3 meters isn't precise enough. We also need to know elevation.
The point can be found at highway.treble.lemon, and you completely missed it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Besides, everyone can use a healthy reminder not to decorrugate their aura.
You're just mad because your square is Poopy Smelly Fart.
Klaatu, Verata, Nickto.
bad addressing costs the Royal Mail £775m per year.
So how will this system solve that? A sender can still give a bad address. Most badly addressed mail that I nevertheless get has the postcode wrong, a fairly arbitrary set of letters and numbers. This new system is a totally arbitrary set of words. People do not remember post codes - they copy them from an address book, incoming letter, or database and can copy it wrongly. Likewise, people are not going to remember these word triplets (I've got 50 Xmas cards to send), they will copy them from an address book, incoming letter, or database and can still copy it wrongly. Get one word wrong (I gather pluralisation matters) and it will go to Timbuctoo instead of Kansas.
It would save the Royal Mail and other couriers a lot if their guys actually rang my doorbell when they arrive instead of just posting a "You were out" card through - they seem to have a phobia about it. But I live in a remote scenic area and I think they like the idea of a second morning's relaxing drive this way instead of fighting city traffic the following day.
It is not a great solution. What happens when you don't live at ground level but on the second , third or 100th floor?
If you live in a 100 story structure then you already have an address. This isn't meant to solve problems of another kind.
What an idiotic system. There already exists a solution to this problem.
Generate an IPV6 address for each 3x3 square. Encode the same address in a chip and implant this chip in each individual who is allowed to occupy the 3x3 space. Any person whose implanted chip does not contain the correct address may not occupy that space and will be subject to immediate detainment and questioning. We can also look into walling off each 3x3 square so that no illegal square immigrants come in.
Do you people have any other problems you need me to solve for you today?
Sincerely Yours,
Donald Trump
Whichever one you want.
what3words is a word -> lat/long service. It works extremely well for lat/long information. Perfect for saying where your geo-cache is, or even telling people where to meet in the park, or approximately where you are in some rural area. Its not a replacement for an actual address, but certainly can help if you don't have an actual address.
Or the shifting continental plates... I saw an article yesterday promising a cure to aging within 5 years, therefore I need my mailing address to be valid for >1m years.
Neither.
Klaatu, Verata, Nickto.
barada! for Gods sake man, it's barada!
This seems like a cool idea, but are we really going to get the world to start using an algorithm for determining location that appears to be proprietary and closed-source? I was looking to find specifically how it works and as far as I can tell you can only implement this by downloading apps or APIs from what3words, and their closed code will do all the work mapping locations to words and vice-versa.
Why would anyone build any type of important solution or process on top of this and have their hands tied to this one vendor to use it going forward. Its not like you could upgrade or convert to a different process later if your plan was to get people to use this new method for specifying their location.
Granted, this is not a perfect system. As some have already stated, it dot not address elevation, and the words are not in a predictable order. This is not supposed to replace GPS, it is, in a small, easily *PRINTABLE* or storable form, a way to refer to places that don't have conventional addresses, and do it in a way that a person can easily remember. This is invaluable for hikers, campers, archeologists, doctors, aid agencies. Pretty much anyone that needs to find a place in the back of beyond, or convey a location in the back of beyond easily. As as to elevation, should the need arise, it is fairly easy to tack on "3rd floor" or "10 meters up" to the address to get an exact point in the universe.
So I checked the site, and the tree words that it picks for the location it guessed I was at are "meto.pienso.coger", which in Argentinian Spanish would translate to something like: "I put (something) in. I think. To fuck" Somebody didn't think this through.
You live at horse.battery.staple, correct?
This signature is false.
"Look, maybe I didn't say every single little tiny syllable, no. But basically I said them, yeah." Also, the developers of EverQuest have their own take on it: http://everquest.allakhazam.co... Check the prompt just before receiving a tattered cloth note.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Either one can be proved the same way: Address a piece of mail to it, and then ask me to produce it in person a week or so later. That will suffice to prove that the address can lead content to me. Anything further, that can't be proved about the address, is outside of the scope of an address's purpose.
www.wavefront-av.com
I'm impressed by the idea, but it won't be fully realized until the language set includes Klingon and Elvish.
"The 'unaddressed' can't open a bank account, can't deal properly with a hospital or an administration, and can even struggle to get a delivery."
Putting a "can even" or "can't even" at the end of a list implies that that last option is especially surprising or shocking. However in this case struggling to get a delivery is pretty much a no brainer.
If you want someone to send you something, the person you're asking needs to know where to actually send it. If you can't accurately describe where you are then they have no way to get to you.
Opening bank accounts or going to a hospital on the other hand are things that shouldn't actually require you to have a permanent place of residence, labeled or not.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
"Three, sir!"
"Third! Third would act as a checksum!"
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
DAMMIT! I am at penis.turtle.fatass.
Who thought this shitty system up?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Yes the initial choice of the word combination is arbitrary. Having worked on a (massively expensive) project that merged several national address databases, I think this idea is brilliant. Address databases are created for different purposes, eg: council is only interested in property numbers (lot number), post office is only interested in the letterbox (street address), utilities are interested in access points (easements). For a normal house on a normal house lot the data in the different databases refers to the same location, for something like an office inside a football stadium, things get very confusing. When you get down to details, the number of variations as to how people enter an address into a free form text field is mind boggling. The system they propose fits inside a 10mb file, it's easy for humans to remember, easy for computers to manipulate, and would be a vast improvement on what is already our there.
The obvious problem is getting everyone to use it, as they say in their video it would need to be added to services such google maps and integrated into GPS apps. Places like Africa, India, SE Asia, even outback communities here in Oz would benefit greatly.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Even latitude/longitude coordinates give you some clue at all about where they are, which is all this system is attempting to crudely replace.
Where is 'correct . battery . staple'?
Is it near 'stupid . coordinate . system'?
"stupid.coordinate.system" wasn't found, but "silly.mapping.system" is in northern Texas, between Lubbock and Amarillo.
do not read this line twice.