Ever since the social-tracking tool Dodgeball came and, for the most part, went, I've been both completely intrigued by and completely horrified by the idea that one day our social lives might really be mapped against where we happen to physically be at any one moment in time. The cultural anthropologist in me finds it breathtaking to think about that the level of control that gives us humans over our social existences. But the borderline agoraphobe in me starts to hyperventilate at the thought that someone I went to junior high school with might want to come by and say "hey" while I'm sunning myself at Riis Beach.

Dodgeball indeed flamed out, but with the announcement of what can fairly be called the third-generation iPhone's extreme GPS, I'd better find some way of handling those fears quick. Today's keynote makes clear that Steve Jobs is taking a see-what-sticks approach to location. The iPhone network will pinpoint your location using wifi network data, cell tower triangulation and true GPS. And Loopt, which seems a lot like a reincarnation of Dodgeball, will be one of the signature applications included in the launch of the new apps directory. Spend about 3 1/2 seconds playing with Google Maps on a second generation iPhone and you know that Apple just plain knows how to handle location -- it's as intuitive as you want it to be already, and beautifully integrated with the web via Safari. Add in multi-layered location tracking baked right in, it's probably a good bet that were on the cusp of some pretty serious advances in the world of geo-social tech. Gulp!