what is a position?

hello.

the current draft specifies a position exclusively in terms of 
geographic lat/long concepts (or alternatively, reverse geocoded address 
information). while this is of course the most important position 
concept, i am wondering about other position concepts. specifically, 
there is ongoing work about URI schemes for geolocation 
(http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-mayrhofer-geopriv-geo-uri-00.txt), and 
while i am not a huge fan of the current draft, i think the idea of 
representing locations as URIs is a good and obvious one.

one scenario: i am traveling and would like to avoid leaving an exact 
GPS location trail. so i set my mobile device to say that i am in (and 
this is completely made up) geo:usgs.gov/states/CA and all i am saying 
with that is that i am in california. privacy-wise, this lets me choose 
how much i want to disclose, and it still allows me to get localized 
results.

i don't want to engage in detailed discussions around how such a scheme 
could or should be designed, who is responsible for managing the 
"namespaces", and how all of that would fit into a more location-aware 
web (or at least that should go into a different thread). but i would be 
interested in feedback about that scenario, and how exactly this idea of 
"privacy-friendly locations" could be supported.

oh, my concrete comment: the position definition should also support a 
URI as a datatype.

cheers,

erik wilde   tel:+1-510-6432253 - fax:+1-510-6425814
        dret@berkeley.edu  -  http://dret.net/netdret
        UC Berkeley - School of Information (ISchool)

Received on Sunday, 22 June 2008 01:48:14 UTC