He words me, girls, he words me
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2
Back on April 13th I wrote a post, "Three Little Words" about an intriguing company called what3words. In brief, what3words divides the entire world (including the oceans and ice caps) into 3 meter by 3 meter squares. An algorithm then assigns three random words to designate each square.
At the time I expressed some skepticism. I wasn't sure that this solved a problem. I admit, saying "planet.inches.most" is easier than saying 40.689266 -74.044511 (however you say it, it's the location of the Statue of Liberty). But I still have some concerns, including the fact that you can't perceive relationships ("maple.oddly.zips" is actually quite near "planet.inches.most," but you couldn't possibly know that just looking at the three words; in more conventional notation it's 40.712980 -74.013122 -- the site of the World Trade Center). If you're interested in more of my concerns just see the April 13th post.
Recently there was a story on National Public Radio. It seems that the nation of Mongolia has now adopted the what3words system of location designation for postal deliveries and emergency services.
Mongolia certainly faces some interesting challenges. It's the 19th largest country on earth, with an area of more than 1.5 million square kilometers (more than twice the size of Texas, nearly as large as Alaska), and it has a rather small population (about three million -- about the same as Mississippi). Much of the country is uninhabited, and many of people (around a third) are nomadic or semi-nomadic. Which makes finding them a little difficult.
So, using their smartphones -- and yes, most Mongolians do have cell phones* -- they can specify exactly where they are using just three words. So their mail can find them (and so can emergency services) out in the vast emptiness of the Gobi or wherever they are.
It certainly sounds good. And according to Rachel Martin's interview with Chris Sheldrick on Sunday, June 19th Mongolia will be adopting the system country-wide in July.** If you go to the what3words website, you'll see that lots of emergency responders and e-commerce outfits and even taxi companies around the world are apparently using the service.
But I still have doubts. For one thing, what language will the three words be in? It's true that what3words is available in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, and Turkish, as well as English. But not Mongolian.*** Russian is spoken in Mongolia, but is apparently in severe decline: "it is hard to find a Mongolian under 40 who speaks better than broken Russian."**** So are Mongolian nomads supposed to speak English well enough to use the system? Flawlessly?
And it still bothers me that you can't see the spatial relationships from the coordinates.
However, I am very pleased to say that I did find an online tool for converting from latitude-longitude to what3words and vice versa. It's here: Batch Conversion Tool (http://developer.what3words.com/batch-conversion-tool/). You can convert up to 100 coordinates at a time!
So -- we'll see. This may be the wave of the future. I'm still skeptical, but I'm willing to be persuaded.
* The 2014 CIA estimate was 103 "subscriptions per 100 inhabitants," which may sound like a lot, but in fact Mongolia only ranks 139th in terms of mobile cellular subscribers (see: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2151rank.html#mg). One other point: It's not clear if these are all smartphones or not. If they're not, they can't run the algorithm.
** You can find the transcript of the NPR interview here: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=482514949.
*** Interestingly, the three words are not translations. The Spanish version of the location of the Statue of Liberty (in English it's "planet.inches.most") is "tolerar.puntual.empanar" or "tolerate," "punctual," "tarnish."
**** James Brooke. For Mongolians, E is for English, F is for Future. New York Times, 15 Feb 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/world/asia/for-mongolians-e-is-for-english-f-is-for-future.html?_r=0).
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mongolias-new-address-system-gives-every-location-a-poetic-threeword-name
http://what3words.com/2015/08/un-asign/
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=4010
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/19/482514949/welcome-to-mongolias-new-postal-system-an-atlas-of-random-words
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mg.html
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