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.
In fairness, for you to say those beliefs aren't valid now is equally conservative - things will change and maybe in the direction of their beliefs, in part because of what they do. That's how change happens - some people with a different vision persevere from being rejected to being accepted.
They are conservative about time X, and in your comment is conservative about time Y (which happens to be now).
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.
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.
A mathematically ideal sheet of paper in a 3d-dimensional space can be addressed with both 2D coordinates, within the reference frame of the paper, and 3D coordinates, within the 3D space, but given that the paper has a location in space, 2D coordinates are sufficient to specify a point in 3D space.
You can do the same with geography. It's why generally only specify geographical coordinates with latitude and longitude, altitude is a given from those two, since you're as unlikely to be hovering in the air as you are to be immersed in bedrock.
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.
If you lived in a high place (Denver), you will find it different from a flat lowland (Chicago).
Also in Rio, how high you live can be a marker depending on which part of town you are. Favelas are on hills, whereas wealthy people in Zona Sul live down the hill closer to the beaches.
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.
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
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!
They are conservative about time X, and in your comment is conservative about time Y (which happens to be now).
"Geography is three dimensional" doesn't correctly communicate the time dimension.
You can do the same with geography. It's why generally only specify geographical coordinates with latitude and longitude, altitude is a given from those two, since you're as unlikely to be hovering in the air as you are to be immersed in bedrock.
Also in Rio, how high you live can be a marker depending on which part of town you are. Favelas are on hills, whereas wealthy people in Zona Sul live down the hill closer to the beaches.
Not workable in practice, though!