Utopia

Standards

Addresses

One thing is for sure, the way dates and locations are used will be very different and very efficient. I once wrote a whole article on this on my old website, but I’ll reiterate here, in short.

The ways the entire world uses addresses and dates are wrong, completely. When stating an address, for example, information is passed that is completely useless until the very last bit of information. For example, take a look at the address:

What’s the first piece of information? The street address: 123. Can you use that right away? No, it’s useless without the street name: Big Boot Street. Can you use that? No, it’s useless without the city: Los Gatos. Can you use that? No, it’s useless without the state: Colorado. If you are reasonably well acquainted with North America, at that point, you can start using all the other information. But now you have to remember back all that other junk (if you’re lucky, you have it written down somewhere). You have to “unroll the loop.” Now that you have the state, you’re ready for the city, then the street, then the number. You see, that information is not presented to you in the order you need it—you had to cache all that information that was useless to you in the order it was given. Why not present addresses in the format that is most useful, i.e.:

Doesn’t that make a lot more sense? Once you know the state, you can zero in on the city, then the street, then the street number. This is the only way of presenting addresses that makes sense. The way we use addresses now is completely backwards.

The only entity that uses this now (that I know of) is the LDS church for missions. When I went on my mission to Florida, I didn’t go to the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida Mission, I went to the Florida Ft. Lauderdale Mission. This isn’t why I think it’s superior; I didn’t realize until years later, after I had come to this realization, that that is what the Church was doing: using addresses in a coherent manner.

Dates

That brings us to dates. Every place in the world uses dates wrong. In the US, most people use: month, day, year. E.g.: May 12, 2005. In Europe (and the US Army) they use: day, month, year (which is even worse). Just as addresses are backwards, so are dates. We need to start at the macro and work towards the micro. Otherwise, we have to cache information that is useless to us until we get all the information.

Dates should be presented: year, month, day. So, you didn’t get married on June 6, 1987, you got married on 1987 June 6. Don’t worry that it sounds weird: after using it for awhile, you’ll become accustomed to it, trust me. And it’ll be much more efficient.

So, everyone in Utopia would use these systems of addresses and dates. Of course, since they have to stay in touch with everyone in the outside world, they’ll have to use the old, backwards system to communicate with them. That’s okay, maybe someday they’ll catch up.

Incidentally, after I had written this all up and worked out all the kinks, I discovered that my way of representing dates is similar to the ISO 8601 standard. Imagine that, I invented something that had already been invented.

Addresses, take 2

Back to addresses again. I also had an article on my website about this, but the best address system I ever encountered was when we lived in Utah. At first, these addresses look very screwy:

What’s up with that? Where’s the street name? How come it has two numbers? What are they smoking in Utah!?! Once you understand it, however, it makes much more sense than our current address system. Let’s look at our address system for a moment. Let’s say you call up your friend, Celeste. You want to visit Celeste and she gives you her address: 99 Bombshell Lane. Then she hangs up. What’s the first thing you do? Pull up Mapquest (or Google Maps), of course, and find out where Bombshell Lane is. What if, instead of having to look it up, the information on where her house was was in the address itself? With the Utah system, it is.

Now, let’s decode the strange Utah system. Let’s look at that address again: 107 North 2200 East. What does it mean? Well, the first part of the address, 107 North, is where in the city the place is located. Okay, but what does it mean? “107 North” means that the place is between the first (100) and second (200) streets north of the center of town. The next part of the address, 2200 East is actually the street it is located on. That means that the place is “one block north of the center of town on 2200 East.” It’s that simple. All that information is contained in the compact address of 107 North 2200 East.

What if the place you want is located on an east-west running street? Simple, an address for such a place would be:

The east-west directive is switched with the south-north directive. But how do you know where the center of town is? You don’t really need to know, since all the streets in Utah are labeled like 2200 East and 300 South, but the center of town is at the intersection of Center and Main (the direction of each changes from town to town, but it doesn’t really matter; some towns use State Street instead of Center or Main).

Modifying this so it fits our superior scheme is easy: just switch the directives. 107 North 2200 East becomes: East 2200 North 107. So, we’d have something like this:

The location of the address is contained in the address, and it is presented in the most efficient manner possible.

Measurement

The US was never serious about converting to the metric system. If they were, all new speed limit signs would’ve been printed in metric, with the MPH in small numbers below. But they didn’t, they still show MPH and that’s all—they don’t even have the KPH in small numbers! If you don’t have a car with MPH on the speedometer, you’re screwed.

Likewise in schools. We were taught the old US/Imperial system and the metric system as a side note. We were told that by the time we were adults, the metric system will have totally replaced the US/Imperial system. Did it? Did it even come close?

I’m sorry, the metric system may not be perfect, but using it is a whole lot easier than using the US/Imperial system. How many pints are there in a quart? Who knows? Who cares? Four? Two? How many tablespoons are in a cup? Sixteen? What kind of sense does that make?

Now, how many deciliters are in a liter? That’s easy: ten. How many centiliters are there in a liter? That’s easy: one hundred. Now a hard one: How many milliliters are there in a centiliter? That’s still easy: ten.

The metric system is still just as easy when dealing with lengths, weight and temperature (the deficiencies of the centigrade (a.k.a. Celsius) system can be made up for by using decimals).

So, Utopia’s schools will teach the metric system, all units of measurement will be in the metric system. The old US/Imperial system will still be taught as a side note, but it won’t be used anywhere in the city: all speed limit signs will be in KPH, the local forecast will be given in centigrade, your cars will get KPG, not MPG. Don’t worry, the old, archaic US/Imperial system will still get plenty of use, however. People will have cookbooks using it and people will still use it when referring to their height ("I’m six foot three!" sounds better than "I’m one point nine-o-five meters!").