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!
replyThe 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
replyIf you accepted that nothing exists at the north pole, that’s enough to obtain meaningful 2d coordinates for a location:)
replyNot workable in practice, though!
Altitude is the third dimension, but I presume you knew that.
reply"Geography is three dimensional" doesn't correctly communicate the time dimension.
You can model geography as a 2D heightmap to a pretty good approximation tbh.
replyEven 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.
replyHmm 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.
replyI 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.
replyAlso the altitude of a given lat/long can change due to geological processes, climate processes, war, etc.
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