One of the most difficult things to navigate when I first arrived in the United Arab Emirates was the fact that there are no addresses. I, like everyone else, learned to locate places using landmarks.
What was interesting about that process was this: what I considered a significant landmark, didn't mean the next guy used that same landmark.
One of my most frustrating adventures involved searching for a location that had several very distinct and "obvious" buildings nearby that made great landmarks. However, the guy giving me directions didn't use any of those, choosing instead something obscure, so I spent hours riding back and forth, just a couple blocks away from the place I was trying to find.
Anyway, all of that came to mind when I was reading this article on a geolocation system that is different, and simpler than the current GPS Coordinate System that is widely used. I'm not sure it's ready for prime time, but it's an interesting alternative nonetheless.
Here's an excerpt from the article in the New Yorker entitled, "Meet Me in ZT.9Z3."
To get to All Stars, a barbershop in Accra, Ghana, you go to the Chicken Republic opposite the Shell station, continue to the next intersection, then turn left and walk until you see the sign. “We don’t have street numbers,” the owner of the shop told me. A bald customer elaborated: “If you get a map of the city, you will see the streets with names,” he said. “But we don’t use them. We are not used to them.” Elsewhere in Accra, where I was living until March, the directions are similar. To get to the maternity store, you go to a place called School Junction and look for the rec center. To get to Hot Gossip, you go to the Vodafone shop and call the club’s bouncer. To get to George’s house, you go to the University of Professional Studies and ask for the Redd Lobster. To get to Freda’s, you go to a particular traffic light, turn left at Cristo’s Pub, and look for a green truck parked under a palm tree.
Or, according to Kewal Shienmar, you could just type “97.N7” into an app and navigate straight there, smartphone in hand. Shienmar’s organization, a nonprofit called the Mapcode Foundation, has designed a system that assigns a unique and easily remembered address to any spot on the planet, without reference to landmarks or street names.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mapcode/id905217356?mt=8
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/should-mapcodes-replace-gps
No comments:
Post a Comment