What Three Words ⇥ qz.com

Frédéric Filloux, writing for Quartz:

On Nov. 16 in New York, at the Next Billion conference, Chris Sheldrick, the CEO of What3Words, captured his audience with strong arguments: 75% of the earth population, i.e. four billion people, “don’t exist” because they have no physical address. […]

This is one of the world’s largest slums in the world, the Rocinha favela: 355 acres (143 hectares) of intertwined sheds hosting 70,000 people. Translated into density, this amounts to a staggering 120,000 persons per square mile (48,000 per square km). Now try to figure out how to deliver a package, or simply how to provide the most basic administrative assistance such as monitoring health or education.

Sheldrick’s company — What3Words — seeks to resolve that by assigning three unique words for every three-by-three-metre square of land in the world. An absolutely terrific and intriguing project. You can pop in your own address, and there’s even a developer API.