Oh what I'd give for that wonderful phrase
To hear those three little words
That's all I'd live for the rest of my days
"Three Little Words" by Harry Ruby, lyrics by Bert Kalmar, published in 1930 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61rdIn2IGJI).
I came across a very odd website recently. The folks there have come up with a very weird answer to a very real problem.
[Did you notice how I wrote "very" three times in that first line? I'll explain why later.]
The problem:
Where are you? Or, a little more explicitly, how do you define your location?
There are several different ways to define location. They usually come down to:
- Site: "On the bay where it smells so bad, near the headland where the polluted creek flows into the sea."
- Situation: "Near the farmhouse where they found all those bodies."
- Mathematical: 19.409214° N, 155.283380° W (want to see this location? Click here).
Site is sometimes called "fixed" or "physical" location,
situation is also known as "relative location," and
mathematical location is also known as "absolute location." A slightly different way of talking about location would be in terms of "locality" (an area with a well-defined name but not much specificity -- when you tell someone you're from California, you've told them something, but not very much).
Regardless of how you define it, we all need to know where we are (and we need to be able to tell other people where we are).
So what's the problem?
Well most of the world is uninhabited, so it's not always easy to use site and situation ("I put the treasure under a white rock near a dead tree" may not be all that helpful after a few years). You can always use mathematical locations, but let's face it, even if you're a geographer you can't really visualize 19.409214° N, 155.283380° W, or 21.324309°N 157.925366°W (they're near each other, but quite different -- one has much better restrooms).
Computers easily use latitude and longitude. People have a lot more trouble. Computers can memorize a string of numbers like "+19.414073-155.288372." People have a
smidgen more difficulty. That's one reason we use addresses (street addresses and postal codes, like "5905 Lake Earl Drive, Crescent City, CA 95532," for example) to tell people where we are (by the way, if somebody gives that as their home address,
RUN AWAY!)
The thing is, there are a lot of inhabited places around the world that don't really have "addresses." Somebody living in a
favela [slum] of Rio de Janeiro or an isolated cattle station in Australia's outback may be able to get mail (using a PO box or a friend or something), but that doesn't tell you where they
really are.
To deal with this situation:
what3words. What they've done, briefly, is divide the globe's 196.9 million square miles into 75 trillion 3x3 meter squares. They then have an algorithm that assigns three random (or near random) words to every square. The result:
- 19.409214° N, 155.283380° W becomes "outwards.works.partnered".
- 21.324309°N 157.925366°W becomes "shovels.outsiders.mopey".
- "5905 Lake Earl Drive, Crescent City, CA 95532" becomes "crisps.modifies.passageway" (and if somebody gives this as their location, you should still RUN AWAY!).
Some more examples:
- Badwater, Death Valley National Park: interactions.hopeful.geek
- Delicate Arch, in Arches National Park: bunny.sunbathing.branch
- The entrance to Disneyland (the "Happiest Place on Earth"): contact.bright.miss
- The summit of Mt. Everest: slink.equestrian.canteens
- The center of the Golden Gate Bridge: super.skirt.letter
- The New York Stock Exchange: wide.miss.slave
- The Royal Observatory, Greenwich (where 0° Latitude and 0° Longitude meet): oval.blast improving
- The San Diego Zoo: neck.giant.resist
- The White House: sulk.held.raves
- And my office: covers.bottom.dangerously (seriously, that's the location).
The idea is that you can use just three words, especially in uninhabited or “unaddressed” places, to specify a location. You enter them into a properly equipped GPS device (or computer, or just the
what3words website) and it will tell you how to get there.
There are a number of people who have started using this technique, among them emergency crews (“There’s an injured man at 25.847396°N 81.334165°W” may be confusing; “There’s an injured man at
straddling.collider.both” may still be confusing, but it is easier to say).
It’s an intriguing idea, but I’m not sure how practical it is. The basic issues:
- You can’t see relationships. I may not instinctively know where 19.409214° N, 155.283380° W and 21.324309°N 157.925366°W are, but I can tell that the first is south and east of the second.
- You need software -- a computer, a GPS device, something -- to interpret the three words. Which is kind of what you already need. So how does this make things easier?
- It’s a proprietary system, using a proprietary algorithm. The company could fold tomorrow (not likely, but possible). It’s not clear to me what would happen then.
- This may just be me, but it drives me crazy that I can’t enter latitude and longitude data and get back three words! A street address, sure. Even a fairly vague phrase like “the white house” can get you reasonably close. But you need specialized software to translate from coordinate data to three words (you can get a developer license, and if programming is what you do to relax, have at it).
It’s certainly interesting. I’m not sure if it really solves a problem or not. But it is interesting.
Oh, and remember how I used three “verys” at the beginning of this essay? Well, it is possible for
what3words, since it’s random, to use the same word three times to make what have got to be the easiest geocodes in the world to remember. Some examples:
- birds.birds.birds (just north of a housing development called "The Rye," Epsom, Surrey, England)
- cats.cats.cats (on the railroad tracks a little bit southeast of the intersection of Hartwick Highway and North Wayne Street in Lincoln Park MI)
- dogs.dogs.dogs (in the hills just west of the California State Prison, Solano, in Vacaville CA)
- fish.fish.fish (near some storage tanks off of Schuykill Avenue in Philadelphia PA)
- turtle.turtle.turtle (a forested area near Milan MO)
And where is "very.very.very"? Well, as it turns out there is no “very.very.very”. The closest I could get was “
every.every.every” which is in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.
Hey, I tried.
If you’re interested, go to
http://what3words.com/. You might find someplace you really belong -- see where “
heaven.heaven.heaven” takes you!
For more information see:
http://what3wordscom/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plan-replace-geographic-coordinates-earth-unique-strings-three-words-180949946/?no-ist
http://www.vicchi.org/2015/03/02/reinventing-the-geocoder-with-just-three-words/
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/03/what3words-series-a/
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32444811
