Is Location The Fifth Dimension?

Cover of A Brief History of TimeThe SimpleGeo Promise

I put out this blog post earlier. And I have been thinking. Your laptop screen is 2D. Your smartphone screen is 2D. But Twitter and Facebook happened before FourSquare happened. The time dimension got added before location ever became a factor. Length and width were the first two dimensions. The third dimension was not spatial, it was time, chronologically speaking, pun intended.

But if you go into 3D computing, the third dimension is not location. Easy math, that would make location the fifth dimension of web tech.

That makes it really, really interesting to me. Location has several sub dimensions. Location can be local, it can be global. Local can be hyperlocal with all its associated richness. When you move from local to hyperlocal, that starts feeling like fractal territory all over again. Blows my mind.

And social is not one of the five dimensions. Social is a reality on its own. Social can inhabit any of those five dimensions. Now you know why Mark Zuckerberg is smiling.

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The SimpleGeo Promise

Image via CrunchBaseBefore Einstein the world was 3D. There were the three dimensions of space: length, breadth, height, the usual suspects. You could argue Euclid's world was 2D. Well, old man Einstein came along, and added the time dimension to the equation. And that had huge implications, humongous huge.

I think that whole metaphor is a great way to try to understand contemporary web tech. I just read the name SimpleGeo in a tweet and I saw its promise. I had heard of it before, I think I might even have read a TechCrunch article on it months back.

The stream - first seen on Twitter, later on Facebook - is adding the time dimension to the 2D of the screen. Location is going 3D. And it is both local and global. Social is dynamic 2D geometry as long as it is on the big screen: Facebook.com.
Image via Wikipedia
Many many permutations and combinations are possible. I think it is going to be hard to keep up with all the amazing companies that will get built over the years. No, this is not a bubble. This is the boom we have been waiting for.

Global, local, social, mobile.

This 3D, 4D talk is akin to my fractals talk. They help me see things. They help me figure out much of the tech action.

Related articles

• Is Location as Effective as Social Media? (webpronews.com)
• Part 2: SXSW Video Series - Interviews with Programmable Web, Apigee and SimpleGeo (readwriteweb.com)
• SimpleGeo Makes Location Data Free, Complicates Smartphone Tracking Worries (fastcompany.com)
• SimpleGeo Will Debut Hosted Database for Geolocation Developers Tomorrow (readwriteweb.com)
• SimpleGeo's "Fast and Easy" Geo Database Exits Beta (programmableweb.com)
• Video: How SimpleGeo Built a Scalable Geospatial Database with Apache Cassandra (readwriteweb.com)
• Interview: Jay Adelson of SimpleGeo Talks Geolocation at SXSW (danpatterson.com)
• Making Location Awareness Simple (inc.com)
• SimpleGeo Releases Database for Location-Based App Makers (mashable.com)
• Interview: Jay Adelson of SimpleGeo Talks Geolocation at SXSW (danpatterson.com)