I interviewed a new-hire at the company this week. I was surprised to meet someone who jumped from an undergrad in humanities to graduate work on geospatial data science — just like me.

I asked him to tell me more about the decision, and I was floored by something he said.

He had an internship in a mayor’s office, and after writing up some policy one day he had an epiphany that made him immediately start applying to grad school-

“There isn’t a single thing that can happen in the world that doesn’t have a place where it happened.”

I’m sitting here on a Sunday morning, drinking coffee and thinking. In the grand scheme of history, I don’t know if I’ll be able to look back at the Trump presidency, especially 2020, and understand what took place and where it did.

Was this the year that location became irrelevant? Or is it the moment where its importance suddenly emerged, in hindsight and without warning?