It's Friday, so I try not to post about Autodesk Labs.
Way back in third grade when I first learned how to address a letter, the form was: name, house number and street, city, and state as in:
Mr. Richard Feder
29 Elm Street
Fort Lee, New Jersey
On July 1, 1963, the United States post office starting using the zip code. source: inventors.about.com The zip in zip code stands for Zoning Improvement Plan. Each address in the United States was assigned a 5 digit code. To this day, this expedites the delivery of mail. A postal worker or machine can use this number to route a letter or package:
Mr. Richard Feder
29 Elm Street
Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024
In 1982, the post office then added zip plus 4. source: wikipedia.org The additional 4 digits define a more precise location such as a city block:
Mr. Richard Feder
29 Elm Street
Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024-7521
As a few Autodesk employees discussed on Yammer recently, once you use a zip code, the city and state are redundant. Why can't we just address letters without them? Furthermore, given the zip plus four concept, if house numbers are truly unique within a block, then it should be possible to extend the zip code to include the house number and send a letter as:
Mr. Richard Feder
07024-7521-29
This would make physical locations just like IP addresses - numbers assigned to each device that is part of a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. For example, see where this takes you:
The wondering is alive in the lab.