I resonate with the first paragraph. Those people raised with beliefs of a time that does not exist anymore happen to be very conservative and refuse to see the change.
I get the latitude, longitude, and they added time. But what was the fourth dimension? Or third rather, because the post assumption is that time was the fourth added.
The fourth is altitude. I asked a colleague how he found Vietnam. I was surprised to hear him say it said it was windy, desolate, and cold as hell. It did not match my experience at all. Turns out he had been hanging out at 30 000 feet the whole time!
The lat and lon are actually 3d since we live, up to a first approximation, on the surface of a sphere. The correct way to think about it is xyz in a reference frame anchored in the center of the Earth
Even with altitude, you still need time. The Earth moves around the Sun, the Sun around the galactic center, all at hundreds of km/s. Without a timestamp, lat/long/alt just tells you where something was, not where it is. Time was never optional.
Hmm I thought that, but we don't really live in a 3D world (or use the altitude parameter in a very meaningful way in life) so I wondered whether there's something else I was missing.
I wonder what makes you belittle the altitude dimension? Buildings have storys, humans can sit and stand, birds can fly, your eyes can move up and down your monitor.
I resonate with the first paragraph. Those people raised with beliefs of a time that does not exist anymore happen to be very conservative and refuse to see the change.
Same is true for humans too. About their personality. Constantly changing and you will never meet the same person twice in that sense.
Dubious given Brouwer’s Fixed Point Theorem;)
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
Every geography has a timestamp.
I get the latitude, longitude, and they added time. But what was the fourth dimension? Or third rather, because the post assumption is that time was the fourth added.
The fourth is altitude. I asked a colleague how he found Vietnam. I was surprised to hear him say it said it was windy, desolate, and cold as hell. It did not match my experience at all. Turns out he had been hanging out at 30 000 feet the whole time!
The lat and lon are actually 3d since we live, up to a first approximation, on the surface of a sphere. The correct way to think about it is xyz in a reference frame anchored in the center of the Earth
If you accepted that nothing exists at the north pole, that’s enough to obtain meaningful 2d coordinates for a location:)
Not workable in practice, though!
Altitude is the third dimension, but I presume you knew that.
"Geography is three dimensional" doesn't correctly communicate the time dimension.
Even with altitude, you still need time. The Earth moves around the Sun, the Sun around the galactic center, all at hundreds of km/s. Without a timestamp, lat/long/alt just tells you where something was, not where it is. Time was never optional.
You can model geography as a 2D heightmap to a pretty good approximation tbh.
Hmm I thought that, but we don't really live in a 3D world (or use the altitude parameter in a very meaningful way in life) so I wondered whether there's something else I was missing.
I wonder what makes you belittle the altitude dimension? Buildings have storys, humans can sit and stand, birds can fly, your eyes can move up and down your monitor.
Also the altitude of a given lat/long can change due to geological processes, climate processes, war, etc.