Finding your place in the World with What3words

I have in the last few days started using https://what3words.com/. I think this is a great idea, mapping the World to a minute level of detail so that a combination of 3 words can become a unique identifier for every 3m x 3m square in our planet.

If you read their executive summary or high level statement, they mention the often found difficulty in properly describing addresses in many cities in the World, for example Tokyo. This is true, and in fact I have that problem even with my own home address, as people often mix up or get confused my address and a similar one up the road. However, I think there are some other applications where this idea is even more powerful, and where I would describe it as massively useful.

The first one is breakdown recovery services. If you have ever broken down with your car, you probably were asked for your location, and, if on a road (hopefully a main road, even worse if it was a back road) you were expected to be pretty precise, something like… I am on the B4215, 2.4 miles South of Newent, travelling South-eastwards. More often than not, this information is not at your fingertips, you may well not know the road number, and even less exactly how far from anywhere you are (hopefully, you know your direction of travel, but this is the least critical information unless you are on a motorway). Just imagine how easy it would be if all you had to say was: ‘I am at ///irritable.only.sheds’. No more lengthy descriptions combined with the risk of not being found by the recovery service. I think the AA, the RAC and all other recovery services should immediately start using, and encouraging the use of, what3words.

Another high value application for this idea is sharing locations for hikers, mountaineers, skiers and cyclists. When out on the mountain, or on a path, or on a country lane, I may have many reasons to share a location with fellow hikers or cyclists and, again, this is difficult to do by traditional means with any precision. I now regularly use both https://www.strava.com/ and what3words when out on the bike.

Of course, other more mainstream applications are also well served by the what3words idea, but these 2 applications above I think are complete no brainers and a great reason to download what3words right now.