People have been claiming that the United States Postal Service (USPS) is doomed for years. The rise of email has all but killed the physical letter in most cases and other services such as UPS and FedEx tend to control the bulk of package delivery. The USPS hasn’t taken notice though, as they’re still out there in snow, rain, heat, and gloom of night swiftly completing their appointed rounds. While that widely attributed statement is not actually the official motto of the USPS, it does speak to the perseverance of the service and its workers. In an attempt to survive and thrive in this new digital age, the USPS Intelligent Address hopes to link people using nothing more than an email address.
You’ve probably already received mail that includes a bar-code underneath your address. That barcode helps to identify where mail needs to be routed, and assists in the timely delivery of your mail by the Postal Service. The Intelligent Address system will expand on that barcode, allowing a user to register their email address with the USPS. From there, a company or theoretically an individual could simply address a piece of mail using their recipient’s email address.
This could be a boon for those who don’t want to share their address or other personally identifiable information. They would, of course, need to register with the USPS in order for the rest of the system to work, so some privacy enthusiasts will definitely scoff at the idea. For some who receive a lot of mail, and as a personal example, end up giving their address to different PR and company reps for review products and whatnot, the idea of registering an email address and linking that to my physical address is very appealing.
The USPS has been testing this service in rather small areas over the last year, but larger testing including nationwide testing should start any time now.
Would you like to be able to link your e-mail address to your physical mailing address? Tell us what you think in the comment section below, or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.
[button link=”https://link.usps.com/2016/09/07/digital-to-physical/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: USPS[/button]
