what3words

What three what?

what3words is a system for naming or finding a location somewhere on the planet earth. In the more than three words of what3words home page:

what3words is a really simple way to talk about location. We have divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3 word address. It means anyone can accurately find any location and share it more quickly, easily and with less ambiguity than any other system.

When I was younger, living in a sketchy part of Minneapolis, I had the occasion to summon the gendarmes as the business across the street was being broken into. This was before the 911 service had been set up. Minneapolis at the time had a fair amount of odd little dead-ends and the dispatcher had never heard of the street I was referring to. If this system had been available then, maybe they could have responded? Probably not, that failure to respond was more than a mapping issue.

what3words has some potential as a parlor game. I found it amusing that the phrase “yarn.pushed.trying” brought up the very part of our living room where the Weaver knits while watching TV. “home.page.professor” lands one in Brazil. “starts.halt.blog” is where I once saw a play in Reykjavík.

As one scrolls through the place-names, a strange type of poetry makes itself manifest:

voices stored confirms

things supposed followers

surface visitors brothers

fame wiped speaker

inviting atoms rollers

I’ll leave the topic with this ambiguous entry: fades coarser riddle…