Location: "a position or site occupied or available for occupancy or marked by some distinguishing feature"

I find location as an Identity attribute to be a fascinating subject. I first wrote about location as an Identity attribute in one of my first blog entries.

We just got a Christmas card from my wife's sister and her husband featuring a photo of themselves standing on the Great Wall of China.

At the point in time when that photo was taken, it is fair to say that the locations attributes of Diane's and Gaylen's respective Identities were different that when they were back home in Salt Lake City. Each individual in the world possesses a location attribute (perhaps expressed in longitude, latitude and elevation) at any point in time.

Physical location is usually described relative to a fixed position. My home address is usually expressed relative to the nation in which I live, but can be expressed relative to the earth if I add nation to my address.

If you would like to conduct an addressing experiment, please send postcard to me, addressed only to "Mark, 85204-4623 USA." If the zip code system works, the postcard should come directly to my house. All the other addressing information is theoretically superfluous.

When I fly on an airplane, my address (seat number) is relative to that particular airplane. When I attend a baseball game, my address (seat number) is relative to the stadium where the game is played.

Logical locations (e.g. email address, website addresses, cell phone number) are not attached to physical locations. While I exist physically in Arizona (at the point in time while I'm writing this blog), a logical representation of my Identity can exist elsewhere. The physical location is not necessarily important. I was on a conference call today with six other people. The logical address (conference bridge) was relevant; the physical location of the participants was not.

Location based services, such as 911 service for cell phones, are based on the premise that the location of a person at any point in time is important. Of course, 911 service for home telephone service is much easier to implement, because home telephone users are tethered to a specific location by a piece of wire. However, when technology can link a logical address (telephone number) to a physical location (longitude/latitude), all sorts of interesting applications emerge.

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