User:Jeffholden/Footstream

A footstream is a digital record of the places a person goes in the physical world. A "place" in this context is a named entity, generally with a postal address, in the physical world. This is fundamentally different from a location, which can be specified, or example, with a latitude/longitude pair.

A footstream is analogous to a clickstream. Where a clickstream is a series of Web page requests, a footstream is a series of place visits. Unlike a clickstream, in which the digital recording is intrinsic to the medium -- the Web is entirely online -- a footstream requires technological augmentation in order to create the digital signals associated with a person's visit to a place. Key technologies that have converged to make the capturing of footstreams possible are (1) location technologies, e.g. GPS, cell tower ID and triangulation, wifi-based location and so on; (2) wireless networked mobile devices, e.g. cellular phones; and (3) geocoded directories of physical world places, e.g. those provided by InfoUSA and Acxiom.