Last night's dream was weird.
I was at some kind of conference, but it seemed to be with medical people. I got the feeling that the I didn't trust the guy that invited me, like it was some kind of trap. But... more of a social trap than a physical one. Like he was expecting me to discredit myself by making a foolish social error in public. We ate at a little bakery that I feel like I have known before, but I don't think I really have. I think the guy stole my muffin while I was busy getting some kind of pasta with a nutty cream sauce (literally). Then there was an ultrasound, and Kimberly was there, and she was sort of disagreeing with a doctor about what some of the indications meant and then we were walking around talking to the woman that had the ultrasound and she was trying to figure out where to get her parking validated and we didn't know, but we also needed to get ours validated and then we were suddenly on the way home and... I hit snooze on my alarm clock... bleh.
So, I've been thinking... Our current systems for parcel post addressing and telephone numbering are sorely lacking. I think the trouble is that we are trying to do two different things. We are trying to give each physical location a unique identifier, but we are also trying to associate individuals to one of those identifiers. The trouble is that people move and the information becomes invalid. It seems to me thta a better system would be to have two systems that overlay each other. An location would still have a unique indetifier, but individuals would be given a different identifer. This way you could have a pointer attached to a specific person that points to the location that they are currently associated with, but when they move you simply update the pointer and you don't have to worry about forwarding of mail, etc. It just gets automatically rerouted based on your new location pointer.
To a certain extent, a similar plan could be adopted for telephone numbering. In fact, it already has been to the extent that mobile telephones have been adopted.
Of course, the next question is how to track these people identifiers. It would be possible to have a system that works kind of like the DNS servers do now. You don't remember that gemini.tntech.edu is 149.149.11.7 (unless you're me); you just remember "gemini.tntech.edu". It would be possible to create a similar system for people. However, resolving the naming collision issue is beyond the scope of this document. The short term workaround already exists in the form of address book implementations on various devices that circumnavigate the issue for the individual.
Malachi B-J Brown malachus+spencerandbrown@gmail.com