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Q: Why doesn't the Postal Service use pointers?

7 points by atrilumen ↗ HN
Currently, a mailing address is the name of a physical location. Every time someone changes address, she has to setup mail forwarding and notify every entity she expects to ever possibly receive mail from of the new address.

Would it not make sense to 'virtualize' mailing addresses, such that they no longer map directly to a physical address, but to a database entry containing one? So that a change of address is a simple process of updating a single record and is completely opaque to mail senders?

(And now I'll just get back to the massive undertaking of updating my contact info with all the different vendors and institutions I conduct business with.)

14 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 29.7 ms ] thread
maaarghk
I like your thought process, haha, but I think you have to ask how unique these things can be. Is everyone just given a "PO vBox" at birth? "Mail me at USA, 4921040994!" Does mass-mailout spamming become a lot easier? Hard to say.

Anyway, I think the real answer might just be "nobody thought of it at the time". Maybe you should write them a letter.

atrilumen
Maybe something a bit like ICANN for meatspace? MCANN?
dangrossman
Mass mail couldn't be any easier. You don't need addresses to do it at all. You just drop off stacks of mail at the post office, each carrier takes a whole stack, and it's delivered to every mailbox on selected routes. It's called Every Door Direct Mail, a USPS service. Mailers pay by how many addresses are in a carrier's route.

https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm

nick2
The gov't wants the physical address so that they can send official documents and the cops can come and serve papers.
atrilumen
We certainly have to have physical addressing. (Else, how am I to find your house when you invite me over for a beer?)

I'm only suggesting that we should have a standard way of abstracting over it, such as we do for IP numbers.

Perhaps there should be a protocol like DNS for physical addresses.

rosenjon
I was thinking about this same thing recently when I had to do a change of address. It seems like there is a lot of room for innovation around postal mail. I think 80% of the mail I get should be send electronically. If there was a pointer, like you're talking about, you could opt-in to electronic only delivery of mail, and the sender of the mail could then electronically deliver the message straight to the recipient. This would be convenient for both sides of the transaction.
saljam
Nice idea! Would it be crazy to just use an email address as the pointer? It's easier to remember than a random string of numbers and it means they don't have to worry about name spacing. They can initially verify it by emailing you, like everything else.

And who would curate the mapping? A government department? USPS/Royal Mail? And is it public information, or should some 'privacy' laws apply? If it's the latter, how is sharing that with e.g. FedEx going to be regulated? We don't want to recreate the zip/post code mess!

saljam
Here's another idea: why not use Namecoin [1] to keep the data? It's fair, no one owns it, and everyone can query it.

[1] http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2011/05/12/namecoin-a-dns-alternati...

atrilumen
It's probably not a good idea to start using blockchains for everything. (As much as I dig bitcoin and all.) Shudder.

What about a simple proposal for the convention of firing a query for a mailing address before each mailing, by such means as:

    1. HTTP request to (something like) "/address.txt"
    2. *blank* email with subject line (such as) "address"
I wonder how difficult it would be to get the whole world on board with this, to the extent that a domain name or email address is accepted in form fields requiring mailing addresses.
dnr
I use http://www.virtualpostmail.com/ as my "pointer". It was very helpful when I was traveling around for a year with no permanent residence. As an added bonus, they scan my mail (on request) and make it available on a web site, also downloadable as pdf.

It's not free, of course, but I'm on their smallest $10/month plan and generally don't get anywhere near the limits there.

tectonic
I second that VPM is quite good!
USNetizen
Theoretically this works in small systems, but when you're talking about trying to manage nearly 400,000,000 records, it can quickly get out of hand and data will go bad fast. It's something that is easily implemented on a small(er) scale, but not really a national one. I've worked with systems that size and it's never as easy as you'd want it to be because of the sheer magnitude of the data and the number of people updating it on a regular basis.
stevekemp
Some countries do this already; e.g. Finland.

If you update your address details in one location all companies eventually get notified. It is pretty awesome.,

chris_va
Similar peeve: Phone numbers.

Why can't I call an email address?