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

by Deirdre Mask

Digital addresses have the potential to revolutionize e-commerce around the globe. In much of the unaddressed world, the problem is not shipping the item from, say, China, to Tanzania. The problem, instead, is what logisticians call the “last mile”—more specifically that the last stretch of delivery can sometimes make up half the total delivery cost.