[Sigia-l] Locale and real estate (was Re: notation for locales

[Ruth Kaufman]

> And following on from that - is real estate the only thing that is
> fixed-place? We can buy cars from anywhere in the country/region in
> which we live, we can find love just about anywhere, we can buy stuff
> on auction sites and have it shipped, we can get books from Amazon -
> are places to live the last geographically fixed saleable items?

On the surface it may seem this way, and for most of our purchases,
the notion of locale is transparent, as we naturally tend to do
business within our own locales. But to play a little devil's
advocate, and to tie it back to the notion of locale really being a
property of markets as opposed to location, consider that in the US
(to the best of my knowledge...):
- You can't buy a Citroen (most Americans don't even know this
brand)... Andrew, you alluded to this point in your reply
- You also can't buy Cuban cigars in the US (legally)
- If you buy a piece of furniture on eBay from China, you will
probably have to pick it up at a port (where the ships come in!) and
pay all sorts of fees and taxes... I'm not familiar with the process,
as I've chosen to stick to buying furniture that ships from within the
US. So even if the furniture from China is available on eBay, it's not
really that available to me in my locale... all in all, a challenging
experience
- Imported albums cost more than domestic albums. This has nothing to
do with the material quality of the album (CD), but of some
configuration of business agreements relative to markets

Will Amazon.com sell books in Cuba? What about North Korea? just asking...

And remember this old piece of news about Yahoo!, France, and Nazi
memorabilia? http://news.com.com/2100-1023-244365.html

So in my assessment, while real estate may, indeed, be the only
geographically fixed item (you can't move or transmit real estate),
it's not the only geographically bounded or governed item. Hence the
need for locale in (e)business.

This argument also, I hope, reveals the difference between locale and
location. If you read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, then imagine this
-- while I believe (I could be wrong on this) locale is intrinsically
tied to geographic territory, that territory does not have to be
geographically contiguous, although in our world, it mostly is --
except for nations with islands. I suppose thinking of locale in
context of colonialism also can lead you to the same conclusion.

So now, full circle, the original question was about notating locale.
To us web folk, locale may seem like just another data attribute or
metatag. But in fact, it's a sign of the shape of the world in which
we live and do business. The tags and attributes we sling aren't
*just* for findability.