The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

by Deirdre Mask

Finding people is a problem the Enlightenment was poised to solve, and yet it’s still a problem that so often defeats us today. These new technological solutions seem like the easy answer. So why can’t I get more excited about them? The first problem, unsurprisingly, is money. What3words is out to get rich from its clever invention, and has raised tens of millions of dollars in start-up funding. This isn’t in itself a bad thing—coming up with the three-word addresses is a lot of work—but it’s unfortunate that in an age when data matters more than ever, the new digital addresses are bound up in patents. You can’t find out your own what3words address, or any of your neighbors’ addresses, without asking what3words’s app or website. And even though what3words told me it isn’t trying to replace traditional addresses, they do have the potential to become the official addresses in places like Mongolia, whose postal systems have adopted the system. The company has promised that the app and website will always be free, but I’m not sure I want a young start-up’s software to be the only place I can find out where I am. Google has impressively made its data open source, unlike what3words. Still, it’s Google, one of the richest and most powerful companies in the richest and perhaps the most powerful country the world has ever known. If nothing else, their Plus Codes pull people online and toward Google products. I can’t quite see how Facebook can monetize addressing streets, but at thi...