To theoretical physicist Dirk Brockmann, the borders of the United States are out of date.
“Some are kind of arbitrary like New Mexico, Arizona: They’re just kind of drawn on the map,” says Brockmann. “Often, they no longer correlate with our behavior.”
Specifically, they no longer correlate with how we move.
Brockmann was doing research on human mobility in 2005, and struggling to find useful sources of data, when on the way back from a conference in Canada, he stopped by the home of his old friend Dennis Derryberry in the green mountains of Vermont. Over a beer on the porch, he told Derryberry about his research. Derryberry asked: “Do you know about WheresGeorge.com?”
You can think of WheresGeorge.com as a primitive FourSquare for $1 bills. “Georgers”–as users call themselves–“check in” their bills by entering the zip codes and serial numbers, then write or stamp “wheresgeorge.com” on the bill. If someone finds the bill and enters it again, they get a “hit.” The top Georger–an ammunition dealer who goes by the handle Wattsburg Gary–has entered more than 2 million bills and has nearly half a million hits.