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I’m not so sure 6GCRPR6C+24 is a great replacement for an address, but maybe I just don’t know. Although I could memorize my own address, I’d have a hard time
by numair 8y ago
I’m not so sure 6GCRPR6C+24 is a great replacement for an address, but maybe I just don’t know.
Although I could memorize my own address, I’d have a hard time memorizing my friends’ addresses. Yes, nobody knows each other’s phone numbers anymore, but those were a very temporary relic from a very short span of time (the telephone era). Humans have always known each other’s addresses, and have always spent a lot of time telling each other their locations in the form of a spoken address.
On a more technical note, I am guessing this works super-well for auto-completion, but didn’t see any example of that in the README...
All of the various geonaming systems seem very Esperanto at the moment. I think we (as in all of us, the global community) could build upon Google’s effort to come up with a much more human-friendly system to provide easy global addressing. Yes, the address format system is way too localized and breaks down at both scale and small distances; whatever that code was at the beginning of my post (I’ve already forgotten it, and I’m too lazy to re-paste it) is just not nearly as easy to remember as “100 Ocean Drive” or whatever. I also have no clue how I might represent the building next door.
- topher515 8y agoThere's a feature that vastly improves the human usability for Plus Codes. The least-precision, first-four characters can be omitted and replaced with the City / Region name: e.g., "Nairobi PR6C+24". Considering that uniquely identifies just a few square meters of space on Earth that seems pretty good.
- esolyt 8y agoThat makes sense. "9C3XFWG3+2G" is barely any shorter than using coordinates, but "FWG3+2G, London" is significantly easier to read or write down than coordinates.
- sloppycee 8y agoWhich London? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(disambiguation)
- jarofgreen 8y agoSurely the point of truncated codes is that they are used in contexts where other information makes clear the rest? So if I'm talking about things in the UK and someone says they live/work/whatever at "FWG3+2G, London", I already know which London.
- askvictor 8y agoDoes Melbourne resolve to Melbourne, Australia, or Melbourne, Florida?
- yrro 8y agoI think Google Maps picks whichever is closest to you when you enter the code.
- emilecantin 8y agoOr Melbourne, Québec, Canada?
- jarofgreen 8y agoSurely the point of truncated codes is that you would only use them in a context where things like this were already clear?
- Jabbles 8y agoIt's not a replacement for an address, it's for places that have no address.
- numair 8y agoThis feels like an accidentally arrogant, Western-centric way of looking at addresses that might not conform to our description of an address. Like, “the White house on the hill in John’s village” is as much of an address as 12 Whitehouse Lane, Johnsvillage CA or whatever. This is the same as saying people don’t have money because their wealth is in forms that aren’t immediately liquid, or translatable into dollars... We need to tread carefully here. Especially if we want people to actually embrace this over far more human-friendly existing forms.
- tylerl 8y agoThe primary users of these codes are places where politics prevent addresses from being assigned (government doesn't want to admit people live there). The codes give them a real address that your phone can navigate to, and for them it's working just fine.
- kiriakasis 8y ago> This feels like an accidentally arrogant, Western-centric way of looking at addresses nope, many places simply do not have addresses. many places do not have streets. And unless you can find a more global addressing format that does not require translation of complex sentences we can only use location based addresses for a lot of places. Essentially a plus code is something that you can paste on amazon for a delivery. Now we could say that web giants like amazon are a danger to the world, a danger ever so ominous as so alluring. Still to the aim of identifying a place for delivery many places do not have addresses.
- jarofgreen 8y ago> my friends’ addresses I guess this isn't really aimed at you. As https://xaddress.org/ https://xaddress.org/ says, "4 BILLION PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE A FUNCTIONAL ADDRESS ACCORDING TO A UNITED NATIONS ESTIMATE" (Not sure why they say it in caps, sorry.)